


Stealing Away

by charis2770



Category: Marvel, Marvel Adventures: Avengers, The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: BDSM, Blowguns can be sexy too, Clint Barton is a great guy, Clint Barton is a lot wiser than he looks, Drunk Jane is feisty, Exhibitionism, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Go-kart racing is a serious sport, Hot tub sex is a group sport, Mini Golf is not for wusses, Thor loves funnel cakes, Voyeurism, vacation sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 17:18:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charis2770/pseuds/charis2770
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what happens when the Black Widow puts herself in charge of planning a weekend getaway for four friends, three of whom happen to be Super Heroes, and one of whom has an unfortunate tendency to be a little hard on Midgardian buildings. There is nothing remotely angsty about this fic. I originally meant it to be a short and silly one-off from my other works, but it ended being long and silly instead. I'd call it porn without plot except that's not really true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

Jane

The work she’s doing is fascinating. It’s so exciting to work with her colleagues. She’s always known Erik’s was a keen mind, and has loved working with him for years, but adding Tony Stark and Bruce Banner to the mix has been like rubbing elbows with Edison on many levels. Some days, she can still hardly believe it’s real. Every day is a new adventure. Every night kind of is too, for entirely different reasons, but that’s beside the point.

She loves her work. She does. She loves being here, being part of this amazing team of people, who somehow manage not to make her feel ordinary and dull. And yet, there is a small part of her that chafes at the restriction of having this building be her whole world now. It’s a big building. There is a lot to see and do and explore inside it. And she’s reasonably sure that now that he’s discovered the internet, life with Thor is *never* gonna get old. The liquid latex had been…interesting. She’d drawn the line at horsetail butt plugs. She doesn’t know what happened to it.  Doesn’t want to know.  She’s so happy it almost makes her stupid with it sometimes. And yet…

And yet sometimes she wishes, just a little bit, to just go out and do something completely normal with him. Wishes that seemed a little less impossible. Who and what he is makes it pretty impossible. He doesn’t know how to stop being those things. Hell, she doesn’t *want* him to stop being those things. But if she learned anything from their trip to Wal Mart (well, aside from the fact that Thor can eat an entire box of chocolate chip cookies in about 15 seconds flat, how to butcher an ox correctly, that red sheets don’t show bloodstains as badly as white, not to buy the last dinette set on the end of the aisle, and that they can come hard enough to take out not just a dressing room but an entire supercenter…) it is that Thor and the general public just don’t mix very well. So she’s happy, and her work is wonderful, but now and then, she wishes.

She dares to say something about it to Natasha, who came home from a trip to Russia with Hawkeye a few weeks ago and who has, since then, become a lot less saturnine. One might even venture sociable. If one didn’t mind risking being disemboweled with a soup spoon.

“Do you ever wish you could go out and do something just…totally mundane and normal?” she asks. They’re eating croissants and drinking coffee in what has become their favorite eatery to hang out, since hardly anyone else comes here. Jane doesn’t think Natasha would sit and come so close to chatting with her if other people spent a lot of time here.

“You mean…like go shopping or something?” Natasha asks guardedly. From her expression it is clear that if the answer is yes, Natasha would prefer having several teeth pulled without novicaine to shopping of any kind.

“No…” says Jane, quick to reassure her that shopping threats are not what she has in mind. “I mean you and Hawkeye. You know, like a regular date.”

“Do I still get to bone him upside down in a bondage swing afterwards?” asks Natasha shrewdly. Jane wonders why she ever even tries to ask the Black Widow any goddamn thing.

“If you promise not to tell me about it…yes,” she says faintly.

“Excellent. I’m telling him the bondage swing was your idea after I have it installed,” she says snarkily. Jane chokes on her coffee.

“You’re a horrible friend,” gasps Jane. Natasha smacks her helpfully on the back.

“Serves you right for letting him borrow Thor’s floggers,” she says smugly. “But to answer your question, I don’t suppose I ever thought about it before. Now that you mention it, I don’t guess it would be terrible to go do something normal people do, that doesn’t involve killing anybody or risking our own deaths or breaking international laws. Why, what did you have in mind?”

“Oh. Um. I don’t guess I had anything in mind really. I mean, Thor’s not exactly ‘normal’ date material. The last time we went out in public, every law enforcement organization in several states and half the federal government showed up to clean up the mess. I just wondered if you ever missed doing normal stuff. I kind of do, even though being here is amazing and all. I know we can’t go out for pizza or to a movie or anything, I just…well, every now and then I wish we could.”

“Why can’t you?” says Natasha practically. “Is anyone stopping you?”

“I…well you’ve heard about what happened when we tried to go shopping,” protests Jane.

“Um hm. Serves you right for trying to force shopping on anyone, let alone an ancient warrior god. What does that have to do with going on a date?”

“I don’t think Fury would let us,” says Jane glumly. “Besides, Thor would probably set the restaurant on fire by accident when he decided to show the cook how to roast an ox, or flood the movie theater.”

“Well….yes…if you couldn’t somehow manage to prevent yourselves from fucking in the back of the theater,” agrees Natasha, who does these things just to mortify her. She is a very mean person. But when she gets up to leave, laughing at Jane’s mortified expression, she looks thoughtful.

Natasha

“Do you ever think we ought to be going out and doing normal stuff like dating?” she asks casually. Hawkeye freezes in the process of putting on his pants, which, since he has one leg partway in, causes him to fall over. He looks at her from the floor with a wary expression on his face.

“Is this a trick question?” he asks.

“No.”

“You say that _now_ , but if I answer it wrong, are you going to tear out my throat with your pinkie?” he demands, rolling to his feet and taking a defensive stance, which, she thinks, is ridiculously cute when he’s only wearing half his pants.

“There’s no right or wrong answer, Barton. It’s just a question.”

“Why? Why would you ask me this? I don’t know, Tash. I like things pretty damn well just the way they are. Or were. Now I’m going to be asking myself if I’m not supposed to be buying you flowers, or taking you for fucking canoe rides in Central Park, or buying tickets to _Wicked._ Jesus.”

“God. No. Do you even know how to canoe?”

“Yes.”

“Huh. Who knew. Anyway, stop acting like I’m going to tear you limb from limb. I only asked because Jane said she wished they could go out on a normal date sometime, and they can’t.”

“Why can’t they?” he asks, mystified.

“That’s what _I_ said! She doesn’t think Fury would let them. And she doesn’t think it would be safe anyway. Thor can be kind of…”

“Literal?”

“There’s a word.” God, she’s glad he gets her.

“Natasha…oh my god, you’re having _friend_ thoughts!” he cries triumphantly, at which she is forced to hit him, which causes him to fall down again, only this time he manages to take her with him, and since he’s already only partly wearing pants anyway, it’s a foregone conclusion what happens next. While he’s hammering away at her like he’s made of springs, he makes sure he has her hands trapped tightly above her head before he pants,

“Where are we taking them?”

“Haven’t decided yet,” she gasps, and leans up and bites him on the nipple. He groans, and drops the subject entirely.

Thor

They’re sitting in one of the common rooms watching a baseball game, the rules of which he has grasped much more easily than he’s able to grasp such concepts as unemployment and American Idol. Clint and Natasha have joined them once again this evening. This pleases him. He likes both of them very much, especially Hawkeye (who he has long since learned to stop calling Eye of Hawk, thank you very much) because they seem to like a great many of the same things. He’s not stupid. He knows he’s not in touch with the way a lot of things work on this planet. Some of the others tend to make him feel ridiculous about it. Especially Stark, who he thinks really does this because he’s jealous. He believes that Hawkeye sees past his immortal and rather powerful physique to the man he is underneath. He thinks this is because of all of the other Avengers, only Hawkeye has ever seen him when he was weak and mortal and devastated by loss.  He thinks also that Hawkeye likes the fact that he is the only one of them who truly knows what it is like to be a victim of one of Loki’s terrible whims. There was much turmoil in the smaller man, following the Battle of New York (this is what the reporters are calling it on the television). He knows that in some way, Natasha resolved this for him, and that since that time they have been lovers. He approves of this. They are well suited for one another. Jane likes them both too. He’s glad, because he thinks she misses having regular friends. He has completely uprooted her life, since he fell out of the sky and she hit him with her camper. He tries not to feel guilty about this, but he knows there are some things she misses. He is pulled from his reverie by a commercial. The concept of commercials was another which was not easy to grasp. He can’t understand why people feel such a need to misrepresent things, to in fact outright lie, in order to make a profit. This commercial fascinates him though. In it, several people wearing almost no clothing at all, and of ages running the gamut from barely out of infancy to mature adulthood, are hurling themselves with seeming enjoyment down brightly colored tubes filled with rushing water. At the terminus of these tubes, they are ejected with great force into a large pool of some sort. As the commercial continues, the people ride on strange large pillows atop heaving waves. They are laughing rather than screaming, so he assumes they are enjoying themselves as opposed to drowning. Later the people eat what looks to be a sumptuous banquet. Then they whack at small brightly colored spheres with silver sticks, and laugh when the spheres fall into holes in the ground, lost to them. Then there are pictures of mountains so ancient and lovely they take his breath away.

“What is that place?” he asks. The others, who have been talking during this astonishing commercial, glance at the screen.

“I think it’s somewhere in Tennesee,” says Barton, frowning.

“Gatlinburg,” says Natasha. “Isn’t that some kind of tourist town?”

“It’s in the Smoky Mountains,” supplies Jane.

“This is a real place, not another misrepresentation like so many other of your commercials?” he asks guardedly.

“It’s a real place,” agrees Clint. “I don’t know how accurate the commercial is. I’ve never been there.”

“Neither have I,” says Jane. “But it looked like fun.”

“Fascinating,” he says. “I shall go there someday, and find out.”

“Fascinating,” agrees Natasha, and looks thoughtfully at Hawkeye, who looks thoughtfully back at her.

Clint

“How did you get cleared to do this?” He asks her curiously as he crams a pair of jeans into a duffle bag. Not that he’s not looking forward to it, he just wonders.

“You doubt my powers of persuasion?” The look she slants him is narrow and calculating. Jesus, he adores her. Ridiculously.

“In the interest of keeping all the extraneous bits of my anatomy intact, not at all,” he assures her quickly. “But since I don’t think you tortured Fury or Coulson, nor did you suck either of them off, I just wondered.”

“How do you know I didn’t suck one of them off? Or both of them. I’ve done it in the interest of completing a mission before,” she says shrewdly. She’s baiting him.  He drops the duffle bag, does a forward roll over the bed to where she’s standing, watching him pack, and shoves her up against the opposite wall. Her pupils dilate.

“Trying to make me jealous, Romanoff?” he asks softly, his mouth inches from hers, smiling. “Want me to tell you that if you ever even thought of it, I would chain you to my bed and beat you so hard you’d spend two weeks eating your meals standing up and sleeping on your stomach? That I’d give that traitorous mouth of yours something else to do besides work on another man? That if you shared that sweet pussy with anybody else…outside mission necessity of course….that I would spank it so hard you’d cry when I fucked you for a week afterwards…and that I would fuck you…every day….over and over….until you learned who you were screwing with?” He’s now given himself a raging hard-on talking to her like this, and somewhere during his diatribe, her lips have parted slightly and her heart pounds so hard he can feel it, and her breath shudders in and out.

“I was just trying to get a rise out of you,” she gasps. “But now…fuck yes.”

He leans in close to her ear, pressing his body against hers, letting her feel how hard she makes him. Shit, it’s like a drug, what they do to each other. He doesn’t know if they’ll ever get tired of it or not. He doesn’t think so. He thinks she’s in his skin, in his blood and his guts and buried to the fucking hilt in his heart like a blade he can’t ever remove. He doesn’t want to. He thinks the wanting is terminal, and that as long as he breathes, he’ll be doing so for her. That as long as he breathes, he’ll crave her like an addict.

“I’ll make sure to bring the toy bag,” he whispers. “Did you happen to request soundproofing when you booked the place?”

“It wasn’t one of the options,” she says, pressing herself back against him too.

“Mm. Too bad. Guess Jane and Thor get to enjoy listening to you scream,” he says, nipping her ear and then reversing the roll back across the bed to finish packing. She shoots him a dirty look.

“Fine. You get the first night. We’ll see what they say about listening to you begging for mercy the second night,” she says with a smirk.

“I’ll make sure to make it loud,” he says agreeably. He doesn’t care. Let her broadcast it on fucking YouTube if she wants. There’s no shame for him in anything they do. He hopes she’s not ashamed either. He knows what they have together, the things they like, are unconventional. That a lot of people would call them sick, say they needed help, that their relationship was abusive at worst and just deviant at best. Those people can fuck themselves. They’ll never see that there’s nothing wrong with him or Tasha because a little violence and pain does it for them. They’ll never understand that he can adore her and brutalize her at the same time, or that when she hurts him it makes him feel more alive. They won’t see the respect and caring underneath the violence. They’ll never understand that no matter what does occur in their bedrooms (and bathrooms and living rooms and kitchens and hallways and gyms and dojos and that one time in the control room at 3 a.m. when Fury was asleep and they told the tech on duty to take a break for half an hour…) is ONLY ever consensual and that though they may push each other’s limits, they will never violate them. Fuck ‘em all. She’s his princess, his filthy slut, his Mistress, his tormentor, his fucking salvation too. He pulls the black bag where they keep all the fun stuff out from under the bed, checks it to make sure everything’s there. Good to be prepared.

“To answer your earlier question though,” she says, and he’s gratified to hear that her voice is still just a little bit breathless, “I told Fury we were going to take Thor to White Sands where there’s enough room, and see if we can actually clock him, and see if he can outfly an F22, also test some of Mjolnir’s capabilities in a controlled setting in one of the test towns out there they have set up for ordnance testing. Maybe shoot a couple of rockets at him if he’s up for it.”

“You _lied_ to Nick Fury?!”

“I lie to Fury all the time,” she says coolly. “He keeps asking me where I’m getting the bruises. Next time though, I’ll tell him. In detail.”

“Next time I’ll make sure they’re _all_ where he can’t see them,” he says cheerfully. She snorts, and leaves the room to go warm up the helijet. He throws the rest of his stuff in the duffel and follows her.

Jane and Thor are already on the roof. Jane looks adorable in pink capris and a sleeveless white blouse and a goofy big hat. She’s almost bouncing she’s so excited, though he can see lines of worry on her forehead. Thor’s looking at her indulgently, holding both their bags and her laptop and a camera case and Mjolnir (he’s not wearing his armor so it doesn’t have a place to hang on his black jeans) and two camp chairs and a cooler (that may or may not be empty) and a picnic basket and an umbrella and Jane’s purse like they all weigh nothing. Clint hides his smile and slides on his gargoyle shades so they won’t see the amusement in his eyes. Thor is occasionally touchy about being laughed at, though he’s made leaps and bounds in understanding the difference between ridicule and friendly banter.  Natasha’s already in the pilot’s seat. God, spy chicks are hot. The flight better not be too long.

“Where are we going?” asks Jane, for about the thousandth time since Natasha told them they were taking a weekend trip together. Natasha doesn’t hear her, as she’s started the helijet and is immersed in preflight check. He leans over and flicks the tip of her nose, pretending he doesn’t hear Thor’s low growl of possessiveness. God, the dude would have made an excellent caveman!

“You’ll see,” he says, and climbs in beside Tash, ignoring Jane’s protests.

“How far is it? What if I didn’t pack the right clothes? How long will we be gone again? What if something comes up? Do we really have permission to take one of the SHIELD jets? How am I mmpppggnn…”

He looks over his shoulder at the strangled noise and sees that Thor has picked Jane up in one arm (the one NOT carrying everything else) and is currently devouring her mouth with his own, while striding towards the jet. He tosses her in and hops in behind her while she picks herself up off the floor and takes a seat, huffing indignantly at him. He looks completely unrepentant.

Then the helijet’s rotors are too loud for conversation, and they’re airborne.

Jane

She could hardly believe it when Natasha told them she’d gotten permission for the four of them to go on a little trip over the weekend, and to pack for casual with maybe one nice outfit, and meet them on the helipad at 8 the next morning. She’d pestered her for information until Nastasha threatened to call the whole thing off. Now they’re actually in the air and she can hardly believe it. Thor sits beside her, looking almost normal in snug black jeans and a white t-shirt. He wears street clothes around the tower every day unless he’s on a mission or has an official briefing or they want to throw heavy things at him or shoot at him to try once again to measure his capabilities, but outside the confines of SHIELD, the street clothes actually _seem_ normal. He’s still so gorgeous she wonders briefly if Clint and Natasha would notice if she just took a teensy bite of him.

The countryside flashes by underneath them like a blur. She has no idea how far they’ve come, just that they’re sticking roughly to the Eastern seaboard and heading South. She thinks she sees Washington DC blink past, but she isn’t sure. They’ve veered a little bit inland by then, and she catches glimpses of green, and hills as they helijet screams south. She’s not sure how long they’ve been flying. It’s probably been less than two hours when Natasha’s voice comes over her headset. She realizes Natasha has had them on mute because she’s seen her and Clint’s mouths  move but hasn’t heard either of them until now. His ears are a little red. She doesn’t want to know what they’ve been talking about.

“Secure all stations for landing,” says Natasha. Jane isn’t sure exactly what that means, but checks her safety harness and their luggage anyway. They swoop down out of the sky towards a scattering of buildings and a parking lot. There’s a four lane road, and quite a few cars. She sees a couple of billboards, but they’re moving too fast for her to make out what’s on them. She can’t suppress a small shriek when they nosedive directly towards the ground. The helijet levels out, and then drops smoothly to the ground like a drifting feather.

“That was mean,” she pouts, while she puts her hat back on and unbuckles her harness. Thor is laughing. He’s no help at all.

The billboards are advertisements for some kind of dinner theater with the Mandrell sisters, and a troupe of Chinese acrobats. The parking lot appears to be a rental car place, as an employee in a plaid shirt with a nametag which says Enterprise has exited the small building and is coming towards them with a big smile on his face.

“Ms. Richards? I’m Tom Fielding. We spoke on the phone?” He’s holding his hand out at he draws closer, still smiling. Natasha smiles back.

“Hi Tom. Call me Natalie. Is our vehicle ready?”

“Sure is. Just take a sec to handle the paperwork, if you’ll follow me. And may I be the first to welcome you to Pigeon Forge?”

Natasha thanks him and follows him into the office. Pigeon Forge, thinks Jane, mentally going over her long-ago Geography lessons. Doesn’t ring a bell. She pulls out her phone and Googles it.

“Oh my god,” she gasps. “Thor! Natasha brought us to Gatlinburg!”

He turns and looks at her, puzzled.

“I thought the man said this was a Forge that makes….” He turns to Barton, who is grinning at them. “Clint…how does one forge a pigeon, exactly? Please explain.”

“No, no, no,” she says excitedly. “It’s the name of this town. It’s right at the bottom of the mountains, and Gatlinburg is only about half an hour from here. I guess there’s not really anywhere good for landing the helijet. I read about Gatlinburg after you said you’d like to go there sometime. It’s kind of small, and there aren’t any big parking lots. Or rental car places.”

His puzzlement turns quickly to delight. He strides over to Clint and seizes the smaller man up in a huge bear hug. Clint makes gargling sounds and pounds on Thor’s shoulder.

“Put me down, you barbarian,” he chokes. “I’m never taking you anywhere else if you crush my ribs.” Thor laughs at this, and sets him down, turning to Jane excitedly.

“We are on a vacation, Jane!”

“Looks like we are,” she agrees. “I don’t know how Natasha got the Director to agree to this!”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” says Natasha smoothly, returning with a set of keys. “Ready to get moving? It’s going to take about an hour to get to the cabin.” She leads them towards a big gleaming black Hummer parked up in front of the building. They throw their luggage in the back and pile in. Natasha programs something into the GPS unit attached to the dashboard and backs the big truck up smoothly. “Everybody ready?” she asks, with one of her rare smiles. Jane thinks she’s lovely when she smiles.  The drive is made short by Thor’s absolute delight with everything he sees. Pigeon Forge is several miles of pure carnival midway. It is tacky, and crammed with touristy crap, and big signs advertising endless adventure and fun, and jammed with restaurants and hotels and candy shops. It would be impossible to see it all, if you had a month. When they leave it behind and head up the parkway towards Gatlinburg, they are surrounded by cool green forest. His delight is no less, just quieter. His eyes sparkle as they drink in the trees and the mountain stream tumbling down its rock-strewn bed between the divided highway. She thinks Asgard must have forests like this, because some tiny ache of homesickness she has sensed in him from time to time seems to find balm in the views of these ancient woods. Their cabin, Natasha tells them, is on the other side of Gatlinburg, at the very top of one of the mountains which overlook it. They wheel slowly through the tiny mountain town. It is just as touristy as Pigeon Forge, but less than a fourth its size, made up of one main street. It’s less tacky and more charming, most of the storefronts sport an alpine theme that remind her of some Bavarian village. Thor is enchanted. Clint seems equally so. She catches Natasha’s eye in the rearview mirror and they share a look of indulgent female understanding as Clint explains go-karts to Thor and they share their intentions to be a million times better at handling one than the other man.

The road that takes them out of town and up into the mountains twists like a snake’s death-throes, with curves and switchbacks so tight she can’t imagine how two cars could even dream of passing abreast. The trees are thick, but as they climb, they pass a few breaks which allow momentary flashes of a view that’s quickly becoming breathtaking. Thor is holding her hand, and she has to periodically bang on his arm to make him let up on the grip a little. He’s almost beside himself he’s so fucking excited. If nothing else happens and they get called away for some global emergency right now, she’s still going to owe Natasha for the rest of her life, just for the pleasure the simple journey has brought him. He greets every new experience with excitement, but this seems somehow even more special to him. Though she can hardly wait to have fun, part of her is really looking forward to tonight. As happy as he is at this moment, it’s bound to be something really special, having vacation sex with him. Oh god, she hopes they aren’t all sharing a bedroom! Natasha did say it was a cabin….

Natasha

It takes nearly all her willpower not to take the hairpin turns of the mountain ascent at breakneck speed. She’d really REALLY like to know if the H2 has the traction to make things interesting or not. Pity for Jane is the only thing holding her back. Dammit, having friends sure complicates shit! She sighs as she holds the big muscular SUV to a more sedate pace. The conversation with Hawkeye on the flight down from New York has her edgy. Damn the man. He loves getting her riled, knowing he can. She could refuse to let him. It’s part of her training. As she thinks this, the aching torment of being refused release on the tip of his talented tongue, the sting of pain between her legs, returns to her in a memory that is as cherished as it is frustrating. She’s let him in. Recognizes it would be self-defeating to block him out now. And fuck it, it would hurt him too. Which, really, did she ask for him to care that much? Did she ask to matter? Oh hell. Did she ask to care this much herself? Aren’t they the pair. Fucked, down to the ground, both of them. And enjoying every last sick moment of it too. Oh well. Anticipation makes it sweeter.

The cabin is the topmost of an ascending series of rental properties that decorate the side of the mountains all around Gatlinburg. They run the gamut from old, spare and tacky to decadent luxury. She’d gone for the latter, of course. Plus, the name seemed like an omen, and pictures of the place on the management company’s website only drew her in further. She sees out of the corner of her eye when Clint notices the wood-burned sign posted at the end of the driveway they turn down: “The Hawk’s Nest.” His smile, though fleeting, is so sweet it makes her heart clench. The place is three stories of split-log elegance. Hardwood decks completely surround the upper two stories. The front of the place is almost entirely glass, and its decks soar out over the edge of the mountainside. A hot tub big enough for six graces the topmost deck. A grill, picnic table, porch swing, and enormous hammock are scattered across the lower deck. Underneath the lower deck, on the ground floor, there is covered parking and the main entrance at the back of the cabin. Exclaiming over the view and the rustic elegance of the cabin, they pile out of the Hummer and she unlocks the door. Inside the cabin is cool and inviting. Spanish tile floors and black granite countertops complement a kitchen any chef would envy. A subzero refrigerator, wine cooler, and interior gas grill have Jane clearly planning meals already. This is no bad thing. Natasha doesn’t think any of the rest of them can cook anything much more complicated than plain pasta.

The living room sports a huge mushy sectional sofa and several inviting armchairs. There’s a bose sound system and a 48 inch flat screen television with a blu ray disk player. A connected game room contains pool and foosball tables, as well as a game system and dart board. It surprises exactly no one that Barton can’t pass it by without plucking out the darts and nailing one, two, three bullseyes from all the way across the room. A half bath completes the ground floor. The second and third floors are both bedrooms. There are four, which is more than they need, but none of the smaller cabins appealed to her as much as this one. A center spiral stair allows one to access each floor without actually intruding into the personal spaces on either. Thor, with a look at Hawkeye, claims the larger of the two bedrooms on the second floor by dropping his and Jane’s luggage inside the door. The room contains a king-sized four poster log bed with a hand-made red, yellow and blue quilt. Braided rugs and knot rugs scatter the floor, while a squashy futon sprawls in front of a fireplace. Through an open doorway she can see a sunken Jacuzzi tub and walk-in shower stall. Thor takes Jane’s hand and leads her out the sliding glass door to take in the view. She sees him lay his cheek on the top of Jane’s silky brown head and stare out over the trees. He sighs, and his broad shoulders seem to visibly relax. Jane leans back into his arms. She smiles, and continues on up the stairs with Clint behind her. He cops a feel on the way up, and she can’t help but laugh.

Her laughter stills in a gasp, and behind her he makes a humming sound of deep approval when they step into the third floor suite. There is one small bedroom up here, and then the one they’ll be using. It takes up more than half the upper story. Gleaming hardwood floors are cushioned by more of the handmade rugs seen throughout the cabin. The room is surrounded on three sides by glass, creating a panoramic view to rival anything she’s seen in her life. The bed here is covered by a quilt done in royal blue, deep forest green, and bright jewel-like topaz. It is an iron canopy bed, its rails slung with wisps of blue and white sheers. It looks like there are at least a dozen big fluffy pillows strewn at the head of the bed. Thick jewel-toned pillar candles dot every surface in the room, from the two bedside tables, to the small book case next to a comfortable rocking chair, to the mantelpiece of the fireplace. A hand crafted chandelier of sanded vines as big around as her wrist hangs from the center peak of the ceiling, hand blown glass shrouds of the same jewel colors casting a warm multi-hued glow when she flips the switch. It’s on a dimmer, so it can go from brilliant to sultry with a simple twist. The bathroom is as nice as the one on the second floor. There’s plenty of room for two in the big Jacuzzi tub, and the shower stall with its blue and topaz tiles has not one but three shower heads.

“I think we should live here,” says Clint, coming up behind her where she stands gazing out at the blue-grey mist that gives these mountains their name. His strong arms steal around her waist and he kisses her on the side of her neck, with just a tiny graze of teeth and a brush of his warm and clever tongue. She shivers a little. They open the sliding doors and step out onto the deck. The huge hot tub is covered, but she can smell chlorine and steam. Can hardly wait til dark and finding out how long he can hold his breath. The thought of the bubbling warmth caressing her skin and his tongue, cooler than the heated water, stroking between her legs while her fingers tangle in his wet hair…ok, that doesn’t sound like it’s gonna suck. Her heart lurches when he leaps like a goat onto the deck rail, and she wonders wildly whether it’s even sturdy enough to support him. She mentally kicks herself for being so soft on the bastard that her brains aren’t working. The man knows structural integrity like she knows hundreds of ways to kill a man without leaving any evidence behind. The sight of him, standing there, nothing between him and a three hundred foot drop (or more) to the ground below both tantalizes and annoys her.

“If you fall, I’m not scraping your ass up off the ground. I’m just leaving you for the bears,” she sneers. Hell if she’s going to let him know she fears for him. He looks over his shoulder at her and grins.

“Tonight,” he says casually, “After I make you come with my mouth in the hot tub…” Fuck, is the man a Christing mind-reader? Sometimes she thinks so. “…I’m going to bend you over this balcony rail when I fuck you. There’ll be nothing but us and the trees and the stars. We’ll fly together, Tash.”

“If you’re lucky,” she grumbles, turning her back on him to go inside, but she’s grinning and he knows it.

“I don’t have to be lucky,” he says, suddenly in her ear. She hadn’t heard him jump down and follow her, but she’s too used to being surprised by him to jump. “I mean to take you.”

“Hm. And if I fight you?” she asks, intrigued now. He shrugs easily.

“Then we’ll both be bruised and bleeding, but I’ll still take you. Hard and brutal and so fucking good, Tasha.”

“It always is, you moron,” she says affectionately. He laughs, and spends the next few minutes kissing her breathless. God, if they don’t fuck each other soon, the anticipation they’ve been building since morning is likely to kill them both. But it’s only about 11 a.m. and there’s a tourist trap waiting. Seeing what Thor makes of Gatlinburg is worth a little sexual tension.

When they meet back up on the ground floor, it’s clear Jane and Thor are enjoying their own little bit of tension. Her hair is slightly mussed, and both their mouths are a little swollen. His beard has reddened her throat and what Natasha can see of the swell of her breasts above the scooped neck of her white blouse. They’re both breathing a little harder than climbing one flight of stairs would warrant, and unless she’s mistaken (and she’s not), the god of thunder is sporting one truly impressive erection.

“That looks painful,” she murmurs wickedly. “Would you guys rather take a few minutes? We can go back into town later.”

Jane blushes crimson but Thor laughs heartily.

“What I have in mind will take much longer than a few minutes, my friend,” he says happily. “And likely leave Jane in no condition for enjoying adventures afoot in yon village below. I am given to understand that Gatlinburg is best enjoyed afoot, so nay, I am content to wait.”

Well really. It’s no wonder Jane can’t resist the big guy. Clint laughs at the expression on Jane’s face, and it is only the friend code and many years of training that keeps Natasha from laughing too. She shakes her head and leads the way out the door. Thor wants to drive the Hummer, but Natasha was witness to the first of his driving lessons with Tony in one of Tony’s multitude of cars, and has no desire to pay for that kind of damage. It was Tony’s own fault for putting an alien prince behind the wheel of a Ferrari his first time out though. Served him right to have to replace it AND the garage door AND half the hazard barrels and signs on the test track. Rather than hurt his feelings though, she explains to him that since the H2 is a rental, only the person whose name is on the paperwork is allowed to drive the vehicle. They’re here to have fun, not to drive it home to Thor that he’s an alien to this place and still doesn’t quite fit in. She figures with three of them here to ride herd on him, they should be able to keep the incidents to a minimum.


	2. Part 2

Thor

In this moment he is more enamored of the realm of Midgard than ever before. He had not known such breathtakingly lovely places existed here. Well, he had known it _intellectually_ , as Stark had in the recent past done his best to bring down an entire forest upon their heads, but it had been dark, and they had not taken the time to appreciate the view. The only other natural vista in which he has spent any time is the desert in New Mexico. It is lovely too, in its own way. There is a spare elegance to the spires of multi-hued rock, and the seemingly haphazard way in which the wind paints patterns on the sand. This place, these Mountains of Smoke as they are called (and rightly, for everywhere he looks off in the distance, a ghostly bluish mist arises from the pockets, dales and valleys of the mountains), remind him at once strongly of home and at the same time are purely and solidly Midgardian. Unlike the spires of glass and steel of New York, or the palatial glass and stone of his home, there is something unspeakably ancient about this place. He feels as though he can sense the eyes of the spirits of some great and noble beings upon them as they descend their mountain in the big black vehicle the Black Widow has acquired for their use.

Less than half a Midgardian hour later, he finds himself strolling down a sidewalk in the town called Gatlinburg. He is wearing a new t-shirt, upon which there is emblazoned a hairy black creature he has been informed is called a “bear.” This word appears to be another of an increasing list of Midgardian terms which have more than one definition. The creature called bear has nothing to do with removing one’s clothing or with displaying one’s teeth or with carrying a burden uncomplainingly. It really is a strange language.  He likes the shirt though. The bear looks like an amusing creature. He’s been told they are plentiful in these parts.

“Perhaps we shall meet a bear,” he says cheerfully to Jane, who blanches a little.

“God, I hope not. Thor, if you see a bear, you have to leave it alone. They’re dangerous!’

How Jane loves to worry. He smiles and kisses the top of her head.  They are all partaking of a food he finds fascinating. It is a long tube of batter-dipped meat impaled on a stick and fried in fat. Clint tells him it is a footlong corn dog. Thor has eaten six. He’s still hungry, so they stop and purchase another culinary delight which is touted as a “funnel cake.” Since the vat in which they are prepared is near the front of the bright pink booth at which they’ve ordered these things, he’s able to watch the vendor prepare them. The man is a genius. He uses a silver metal container that reminds Thor strongly of the watering can Miss Darcy used to water the flowers in their boxes outside the New Mexico lab. He shakes a thick batter out of the nozzle of the can into a floating circular mold in hot oil. The batter drizzles out in ribbons and whorls and snakelike squiggles, which adhere to one another. The funnel cake is fried, then removed from the vat and put on a paper plate. It is covered with a white powder. They are asked if they would like chocolate sauce, strawberries, whipped cream or caramel on it as well.

“Yes,” says Thor.

“Uh…which one?” asks the young man who had prepared this interesting edible for them.

“All of them!”

Funnel cakes are so much better than pop tarts; Thor can hardly believe anything so fantastically delectable can even exist. They are by Odin’s BEARD having these in Asgard! As Clint is wont to say quite often, FUCK yes. Clint and Nastasha share another of these unspeakably delicious creations, except that theirs only has the white powder coating it. This seems a shame, as they are missing out entirely on the toe-curling pleasure of all the combined flavors he’s experiencing. He tries to share his funnel cake equally with Jane, but she continues to simply watch him inhale the treat and doesn’t manage more than a few bites. She doesn’t eat enough, he thinks. She is so tiny. If the woman is to continue to be able to keep up with his….appetites….he’s simply going to have to insist that she keep her strength up.

There are cunningly concealed groupings of shops all over the place here. What look like small walkways between buildings actually lead to entire…he thinks the word used for them is “shopping malls”. Tucked in a back corner of the courtyard which contains the Funnel Cake vendor (whose bemused hand he shakes before they move on, with his hearty thanks for a job well done) he spots a tiny shop that draws his attention for some reason. A circular device of some kind adorns the sign, woven about its interior with that looks much like a spider’s web, except that it is strung with beads, and feathers dangle from it. The words on the sign read “Little Sparrow’s Gallery.” He passes by more t-shirt shops and sunglasses vendors and something called an “air brush” stall (which makes absolutely no sense at all, because why would anyone want to brush the air to begin with, let alone pay someone to do it for them?) and pushes open the door, followed by Jane and their friends. He stops for a moment inside the door as a haunting and compelling melody greets his ears. The music being played here is unlike any he has ever heard before. It sounds as though it is a woodwind instrument of some kind. It is the loveliest sound he has ever heard. The proprietor of the shop is a graceful woman with raven-black hair in a long braid that reaches her waist. Few women of Midgard have hair that long. She reminds him of Sif, a little, except her skin is the color of tarnished copper, and Sif is fair as moonlight. Her black eyes are bright and sharp. She welcomes them, and her smile at him seems knowing.

“What is this place?” he asks in response.

They leave Little Sparrow’s Gallery over an hour later. He is laden with beautifully crafted items he plans to use to decorate his bedroom. Jane wears a collar made of bone and beads, that is beautiful on her graceful neck and new earrings of silver and turquoise which she says remind her of New Mexico. Clint carries a painting of a red-tailed hawk in flight against a sky misted with stars, rolled up inside a cardboard tube, and though he protests that it’s unnecessary, his ears redden with pleasure and he cradles the tube carefully in his arm. Natasha has a finely crafted knife of razor-sharp bone with a hilt made of antler, which has been carved all of one piece in an intricate spiral. She smiles fiercely when she tests the edge on her thumb and draws blood. He has spent a ridiculous amount of money, but since he learned how much Midgardian currency could be acquired with his Asgardian gold, he’s a wealthy man, and has nothing in the nine realms he would rather spend it on than foolish things to bring pleasure. Little Sparrow has given him her e-mail address, because his intense interest in her people and their culture has apparently pleased her. He feels an affinity for the Native American people of Midgard, after what he has learned from her. He feels they are a people of honor, and that the warrior spirit is stronger in them than in the others he has met here (his new shield brothers and sisters excepted, of course). She has invited them to come to something she calls a “Pow Wow” tomorrow night. He hopes they are able to attend. Apparently it will involve feasting, and the telling of tales, and songs, and the traditional dances of her people. This sounds to him to be a great deal more pleasurable than shouting ineffectually at the tiny men in uniforms on Tony’s enormous television as they combat one another in the football arena. This is not to say he does not enjoy that activity, which also seems to require the consumption of quantities of ale, just that this “Pow Wow,” though strangely titled, sounds much more enjoyable.

They stroll further down the street, stopping to browse in any shop that intrigues them. He buys several more t-shirts, and Clint purchases an item called a “bumper sticker” which says “It’s a Twisted World, and I’m a Happy Man.” Thor thinks this sentiment is perfect for him. They buy three pounds of fudge and a box of salt water taffy at a candy shop, after tasting samples of them. He wonders if everything here is delicious. Glancing at Jane as she laughs at something Natasha has said, he knows SHE is, and looks forward to bedding her in their wonderful bedroom in the big bed with the fine quilt. Thoroughly. Repeatedly. He loves the way she cries out for him when he takes her, rough and mercilessly. He loves the way she cannot seem to get enough of him. For a mortal, with such a tiny body, Jane has a surprising capacity for lust, and pain, and she is always eager for him. He thinks perhaps tonight it will be long and slow and sweet, and that he will make it last until they are both mindless with the pleasure of each other’s bodies. He’s contemplating this appealing image, and feeling distinct stiffening in his groin, when they almost walk past an interesting sight. Inside the entryway of one of the shops, several people made of plastic but wearing real clothing, and wigs, are dressed as adventurers of some kind. A life-sized skeleton looms out of a sarcophagus. A large flying creature with bat like wings and a long pointed beak and clawed feet hangs from the ceiling. Smoke pours from an opening in the floor, and compellingly dramatic music can be heard from inside. He stops to look at the scene.

“What is this place?” he asks curiously. The others look at the sign.

“It’s an indoor mini golf course,” says Natasha.

“Oh, let’s play!” cries Jane in delight.

After a brief explanation, he understands that this is a form of entertainment like what he saw on the commercial, wherein the object is to hit a colored ball into holes in the ground, and that the mini golf course is decorated with this adventure theme to add to the fun. He also understands that the theme and its décor are incorporated into the various “holes” of the course as hazards to be “putted” around or over or through. Though the purpose of it mystifies him, he’s perfectly capable of understanding that fun things do not have to have a purpose, and is more than willing to give this a try. Jane is bouncing with excitement, and Clint looks smug as he procures four “putters” from the attendant and they all select a different-colored plastic golf ball from the baskets on display. Jane’s is pink. His is red. Natasha’s is blue and Clint’s is purple.

“What do you guys say to a little bet?” Clint says casually as they enter the building.

“What kind of bet?” asks Natasha warily.

“We play teams, and the losers do the dishes anytime we cook instead of going out to eat, the rest of the trip,” he offers.

“As good as your aim is?” Jane says. “How is that a fair bet?”

“Ok, you pick the teams then. Couples or girls against guys?” He is grinning widely, because Thor thinks he knows whatever team he is on will not be the one washing dishes. Natasha looks at her lover shrewdly, then looks at Thor and Jane.

“Girls against guys,” she says firmly. “And you’ve got yourself a bet.” Jane looks at her friend like she has taken leave of her senses.

“Do you just like doing dishes or something?” she asks incredulously. “Why would you bet against him in anything that requires being a good shot?”

Natasha smiles enigmatically at Jane.

“Trust me.”

 

Clint

He can’t believe he’s stuck doing the dishes for the next three days. They better damn well be going out to eat most of the damn time. He glares at his partner as they turn in their clubs and head back out onto the street. The girls are still laughing hysterically. Thor looks annoyed, but not sorry.

“I can NOT believe we lost,” he gripes for about the 17th time.

“That’s what you get for being cocky,” says Natasha smugly.

“Some partner you turned out to be,” he grumbles at the god of thunder, who frowns at him.

“It is not my fault your Midgardian sporting equipment is defective, or that your construction materials are shoddy,” he defends himself stubbornly.

Jane goes up on tiptoes and pulls Thor’s head down for a kiss.

“It’s okay honey,” she says, smothering further giggles. “You only lost a dozen or so balls, and I’m pretty sure they can repair that paper machie sarcophagus and the little bridge…”

“And the treasure chest, and the vampire, and the pterodactyl, and the mummy,” says Natasha helpfully. Clint glares at her.

“Keep talkin, Romanoff,” he growls. “I’ll make you beg for mercy later.” Since he intends to anyway, this is probably not much of a threat. She grins impudently at him and actually sticks out her tongue. Oh yeah. Somebody wants a spanking. Diverted from their humiliating defeat, he drags her in for a quick, hard kiss.

“How did you know we could beat them, Natasha?” asks Jane curiously.

“I watched Tony try to teach Thor how to drive,” answers his traitorous lover. “He doesn’t know how to turn down the power to mortal levels really, not when he’s doing something physical…well…” she looks at Jane. “Ha. I assume he knows how to turn it down when he’s doing YOU, since you’re still walking, but not when he’s doing other human stuff they don’t have on Asgard. He doesn’t really know how strong he is, not compared to human substances like plastic and steel and Styrofoam and….Ferraris. I took a calculated risk that it would be the same with mini golf. Sorry Thor,” she says, patting him on the shoulder. “You are one of the first people I’d want on my side in a fight, and I’d pick you over even Hawkeye then. Nothing personal, Clint, but he’s tougher than you.”

“None taken,” he says sincerely. Hell, Thor’s probably the first person he’d want on his side in a fight too.

“Anyway, it isn’t your fault you didn’t grow up here and learn how hard you can safely hit a plastic golf ball without damaging something, but I took a gamble that I was right. Plus, Clint was being a cocky little shit and he deserved to lose.”

“Hey!” he says hotly, while Jane laughs at him and Thor tries not to chuckle. It says volumes for how happy the big guy is to be here that he forgets his chagrin at breaking the mini golf place so easily. Ok, so it’s worth doing a few dishes to see him able to not be humiliated or frustrated by it like he is by so many other things.

They continue on down the main drag, and stop to get their pictures taken at a booth where you dress up in funny old-fashioned costumes in front of old-timey props. They pick old western clothes. Jane and Natasha are adorable and sexy in their saloon-girl gowns and garters, with their cleavages showing daringly and little toy guns tucked into their garters. He chooses a gambler’s pin-striped trousers and black coat, with a black hat and twin six-shooters, and a big fake cigar. Thor makes an entirely credible U.S. Marshall in his ten-gallon hat with his blond hair to his shoulders, and his long duster and his shiny silver star. It is, however, a good thing the costumes are open in the back, because he’s way too broad to fit in them otherwise. They pose in front of a fake saloon bar and have the picture printed out as a Wanted poster. They all buy a copy. He’s keeping his forever. Hell, he’s getting buried with the damn thing. They look silly and absurdly happy in the sepia-toned image, smiling huge goofy smiles. It’s his new favorite possession. Natasha sees the expression on his face as he looks at the dumb picture and smiles.

“I’m getting mine framed as soon as we get back,” she says.  Jane agrees.

“Am I given to understand that the people of Midgard went about on a day to day basis at one point in your history without any covering whatsoever on the backs of their persons?” asks Thor cautiously. One thing he has learned is to ask about customs or culture he doesn’t get, because it’s when he assumes that things get embarrassing for him. He’s also learned NOT to ask Tony these questions, since the time when he requested clarification on the meaning of a particular phrase and then went around greeting everybody with “Fuck your mother, dickhead,” for almost a whole day before Jane heard about it. He’d been with Tash in Russia at the time, so he only heard about the aftermath of that one. He’s given to understand that Tony had to replace an entire hard drive’s worth of data on improving arc reactor efficiency on a larger scale for private sector applications. He’s not entirely sure what that means, but he’s pretty sure Tony deserved it. He likes Thor, unreservedly, and it’s not JUST because he can compare notes with the guy on flogging and that they have, on occasion, borrowed a toy or two from one another. He hears it’s possible they’ll be initiating Pepper into that club one of these days, which he thinks is awesome. He’ll take the high road and not rib Tony about it, but it’s hard. Well ok, he’ll _try_ not to. It isn’t as easy for everybody as it is for him to be okay with the things they want and need from a lover to be truly satisfied. He has to assume it’s even harder for Tony than for the average guy to be comfortable in his own skin when his girlfriend beats the crap out of him. And he likes it. He looks over at Tasha, who is talking to Thor about Indians and the knife he bought her. Of course, _his_ girlfriend is terrifying and vicious and everybody finds her a little scary, so he tends to get looks of admiration for having survived a night with her. Maybe it’s different if your girlfriend weighs about a hundred pounds soaking wet and is your secretary and is a plain old regular chick without powers or abilities who you’ve already had to save on several occasions. So yeah, he’ll try not to give Tony grief over it. Unless Tony gives him no choice. Knowing Tony, that’s not only possible, it’s likely. Maybe Pepper has super powers after all. Thor has godlike abilities, Hulk has monstrous strength, Cap has his shield and serum enhancements, Tony has the suit, he and Tasha have inhuman reflexes and senses. Pepper has “Handle Tony Stark” as her super power.

 

Jane

Until they set foot out of the Hummer at the top of the Gatlinburg Parkway and took their first steps into this impulsive little adventure, Jane had really not realized how consumed her life has been for so long with theorems and readings and weather and impossible magic. She had realized as they stood on line for those lunchtime corn dogs that she has been utterly removed from the world for what she now realizes is probably years. Even before Thor fell from the sky. She can’t blame Fury or Tony or the Avengers or SHIELD for her isolation, as she chose it herself years before. The only people she’s interacted with on more than a basic level (like buying food or other essentials) are Erik and Darcy.

This is possibly one of the best days of her life, and they haven’t even finished it yet.  She feels almost drunk on the absolute delicious silliness of the things they’re doing. She loves funnel cakes, and fudge, and mini golf. She’s going to treasure this stupid picture forever. Thor is so absurdly pleased with absolutely everything. He’s positively thrumming with happiness. He almost seems to glow with it. They’re not drawing too many strange looks, save for the frequent admiring glance from most of the women they pass and not a few men as well. He is, after all, too gorgeous to be real. And yet he is, and she gets to go home with him. In spite of the fun, part of her mind stays focused on that.

They shop a little more, and Thor spends great gouts of cash on souvenirs and clothes and hiking boots and a coonskin cap which he wears proudly. Because people are laughing at him, Clint goes into another souvenir shop and buys himself one too, and she adores him for it. From the look on Natasha’s face, he’s going to get plenty of thanks later. She leans over and kisses him on the cheek anyway. Thor growls softly at her. She grins impudently at him. His big hand pats her on the backside. Hard. She squeaks a little and blushes.

A little later, they pile back into the Hummer and drive back down the Parkway into Pigeon Forge. There are two reasons for this. First, Clint and Thor want to drive Go-Karts, and there are dozens of great tracks in Pigeon Forge while there is only one in Gatlinburg. Second, they need to go to a grocery store before they head back to the cabin for the night, and there are only expensive convenience markets in Gatlinburg itself. All the regular stores like Wal Mart (Jane patently refuses to go there, and doesn’t care who she has to hit to prevent it!) and Kroger and Publix are also in Pigeon Forge. By unspoken agreement, everyone seems to want to go back to the cabin for dinner.

Male priorities being what they are, the boys are focused on Go Karts. They cruise the strip three times before they choose a park. She thinks she counts seventeen tracks, though there could be more. All of them look fun to her. She has no idea what mysterious criteria have gone into their choice. Thor doesn’t know anything about Go Karts, so his input appears to be based entirely on how high the tracks go above the ground. Clint makes Natasha slow down as they pass each track so he can critique the cars as they speed around the tracks. Some are too small. Some don’t look well-maintained. One track looks ready to collapse. One is too crowded. One is too slow. After what she and Natasha think is a ridiculous amount of personal debate, he picks one and Thor agrees. This is because the chosen park has a huge wooden track that goes up in the air and returns back to ground level via a dizzying spiral. The noise of the cars and the smell of gasoline and caramel apples and popcorn reminds her of the state fairs when she was a child. She isn’t even INTO cars but finds herself wanting to play too. They buy four tickets.  Clint looks as though he’s preparing himself for battle. Natasha’s telling Thor how to drive, since Clint hasn’t seen fit to do so. Jane wonders if Thor’s even going to be able to fit in the seat of a Go Kart. He’s almost six foot five, and rather broad. These aren’t kiddy karts though, so she finds that although he has to maneuver a little, he manages just fine. Clint points at him from behind the wheel of his bright red tiny race car.

“Prepare to pay for failing me at mini golf, Asgardian,” he growls, and slides his gargoyle sunglasses onto his face.

“You speak, Bird Man,” retorts Thor, pulling his coonskin cap down more firmly on his head. “But all I hear is empty buzzing. Your defeat is imminent!”

“You are both morons,” says Natasha flatly, and is informed with great dignity that she simply doesn’t understand. The kid in a University of Tennessee ball cap whose car is between Clint and Natasha is looking back and forth between them bemusedly.  Jane rolls her eyes and fastens her seatbelt.

The teenaged kid who works here hollers the track rules over the sound of the motors. Clint and Thor don’t pay attention to him. Their gazes are focused on the track in front of them with the thousand-yard stares of battle-hardened warriors. Jane laughs. The attendant raises his green flag, twirls it in the air, and drops it with a flourish, and they are off. The men drive with the single-minded focus of Olympic athletes, except their demeanors are those of opponents fighting to the death. Clint handles his mini car with skill and agility, maneuvering for position, angling his approach to the turns to make the best use of angles of approach. Thor’s strategy seems to involve mashing the accelerator to the floor and physically powering all obstacles out of his way. Children swerve wildly to avoid him, caroming off each other and the bumpers like rubber balls. Jane finds herself laughing too hard to pay attention to where she’s going, and crashes into a wall. Since the Go Karts have no reverse, she has to wait for one of the attendants to jog up and shove her backwards so she can get herself moving again. Clint and Thor and Natasha all lap her before she does, and the kid with the orange cap is close behind.  The two men, who she doesn’t think anybody would believe had recently helped save the world to see them now, have resorted now to jockeying with each other for position, bumping each other’s cars and even reaching out to physically interfere with each other’s progress. Thor’s reach is longer. He gets ahold of Clint’s steering wheel and shoves it hard to the left, while Clint is only able to reach about to Thor’s bicep. He curses loudly and creatively as his car swerves hard, almost spinning out of control. She’s glad they’re in front. At least they’re only endangering each other. And really, they’re only moving about 40 miles an hour at best, and under 30 on the uphill slopes. She shakes her head in amazement and follows them. One of the attendants hollers at them to take it easy, and Thor calls him a dishonorable denizen of something she thinks sounds like “Niffleheim,” but she’s not sure. Clint shouts for the kid to back off, this is personal. The kid starts to bristle, and she’s certain their Go Karting adventure is about to come to an abrupt close, when he becomes aware that spectators below, including his fellow employees, are loudly cheering and betting on the outcome of the contest between the two men.

Because he’s lighter, and his car doesn’t have to work as hard to reach top speed, and because his reflexes are a little better (let’s face it, Thor’s combat approach consists of hurling himself bodily at opponents and bashing them into submission with his giant magic hammer, which is entirely effective but not terribly full of finesse), Clint edges Thor out at the end. People cheer. And pass money around. Clint and Thor exit their cars arguing good-naturedly.

“You almost had me there at the end, Blondie,” says Clint, his face flushed with victory. “If you didn’t weigh as much as a house, you might’ve had a chance.”

Thor scoffs at him.

“Indeed, my small friend, were you of a man’s size, I would indeed have proven the better in our contest. Still, I suppose your small size must account for something, in order than you not feel your inadequacies too keenly.”

Jane claps her hand over her mouth in shock. Natasha walks up behind the guys and pats Clint on the head. His glance at her promises retribution. Jane wouldn’t want to be in her shoes tonight! His eyes narrow as he studies Thor, and he’s the only one besides Natasha on the team that Jane thinks isn’t surprised at Thor’s wit. The rest of them misjudge his cultural differences as lack of intelligence. There’s more than one reason they are here with these two as opposed to anybody else. Clint steps up and pokes Thor in the chest with his index finger.

“Best two out of three,” he snarls, and stomps off to the ticket booth.

Thor wins the next race, but they never get to settle the tie-breaker, as the track’s owner arrives halfway through the second race and once they arrive at the finish line, exchanging further insults and laughing like loons, bans them from his park. They leave in disgrace, all four of them snickering with absolutely no remorse. Jane wonders what the man would think if he realized exactly WHO he had just kicked out of his establishment. Die of chagrin, probably.

As they make their way to the truck, a little boy who looks about six runs up to Thor and tugs insistently on the leg of his jeans. Thor looks down at him in surprise.

“What is it, small one?” he asks kindly, crouching down so he’s closer to the kid’s level.

“I know. I know you. I know who you are,” the kid says, his brown eyes wide with awe. “You’re him. You fly. You beat up aliens with those other guys. You’re Thor,” he whispers excitedly. Thor smiles at him.

“You seem to know my name,” he says with a smile. “And yet I do not know yours. May I have the honor of your name, young sir?”

The kid’s eyes sparkle.

“Uh huh sure, I’m Josh. Joshua Stephen Campbell!”

“I greet you, Joshua Stephen Campbell,” says Thor with great solemnity. “It is fine indeed to meet a friend in a strange town. And now I must as you for a very special favor.”

“Kay,” says the little boy breathlessly.

“I must ask that you keep my presence here a secret, just between us men,” continues Thor. His face is solemn but his blue eyes sparkle, and Jane’s heart clutches as she watches him with the child. She suddenly catches a glimpse of what sort of father Thor would be, and is seized with a yearning ache that takes her entirely by surprise. “You see, my friends and I are working here in secret, and our true identities must not be known, by anyone! Can you promise me this, my friend?” The little boy puts his small hand in the large one Thor holds out to him, and crosses his heart with his finger.

“I promise, cross my heart.”

“Ah, this is indeed a solemn oath. I thank you, Joshua Stephen Campbell. It is good to have allies such as yourself who I can trust with my secrets.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out one of the small handful of Asgardian copper pieces he keeps as mementos. He places it in the child’s palm. “I give you this token of my esteem, to remember this meeting by, and as reminder that you and I are forever allies, and as my troth that I accept your oath to keep my identity safe in your heart.”

He shakes the little boy’s hand, and then smiles up at Jane when the kid throws his arms around his neck and whispers that he will never tell anyone as long as he lives.

“I love you Thor,” breathes the child, then runs away towards the slightly anxious woman who is hurrying towards them across the parking lot.

“Haven’t I told you not to talk to strangers, Josh?” she’s scolding as she sweeps him up in her arms. Josh looks back over her shoulder at Thor and blinks both of his eyes in an exaggerated fashion that Jane assumes is his attempt at a wink.

“It’s okay mom, I fell down and that man helped me up!”

She notices that all of them are smiling almost wistfully as they get in the truck, and nobody says anything for a few minutes as they head towards the grocery store.  It’s not uncomfortable, merely bemused.

They fill four carts at the supermarket, two of which are devoted entirely to junk food. Clint expresses doubt that they’re going to need this much food. Jane shakes her head at him. Poor foolish man. He’s never REALLY seen Thor eat. She only hopes it’s enough to last long enough that they don’t have to make another trip before it’s time to leave!

 

Natasha

By the time they pile back into the Hummer to head back to the cabin, it’s moving on towards evening and Natasha is so itchy she’s going to have to dismember someone soon. The teasing that started early this morning and has gone on all day with whispered remarks and occasional hot kisses and glances loaded with intent have got her ready to chew nails. She drives faster than necessary once they hit the mountainside, and Jane hides her face in Thor’s chest in the back seat. Clint sits beside her and stares intently at her the whole time. She halfway wants to stop the truck and punch him in his irritating mouth, but that would delay things even more, and she wants his mouth for more than bleeding. Really fucking soon. Dinner, she decides, is going to have to wait. She glances in the rearview mirror and sees that Thor has resorted to intimate measures to distract Jane from the terror of their hair-raising ascent.

His hand is fisted in her hair and he’s kissing her like he’s going to breathe her in. Jane’s making helpless mewling sounds as Thor bites her bottom lip gently, then traces his mouth along her jaw to suck her earlobe and whisper something to her. His free hand weighs her breast gently in his palm, and brushes her nipple lazily with his thumb.

“Oh God,” moans Jane softly. Natasha mouths the same words, feeling lust pooling deep in her belly and twisting around her spine. Oh God indeed. She cuts her eyes at Clint, who is still watching her. He tilts his head back a little and she sees his nostrils flare.

 _I can smell how much you want me,_ he signs to her in the combination of ASL and military signs they use on ops when they cannot speak aloud. She can’t sign back, driving here, damn him. She glares, and shifts in her seat. Her jeans feel too tight. She presses down recklessly on the accelerator and concentrates on getting them the fuck back to the Nest before someone gets killed.

She screeches to a halt in the driveway, gravel flying, and shoves the gearshift into Park. All of them are out of the truck in record time. Groceries are carried in but left waiting on the countertops. If anything spoils, none of them can seem to care. She doesn’t know what it is, but the same urgency she feels seems to have infected all of them. Thor picks Jane up and throws her over his shoulder. She shrieks and surprise, and then pounds ineffectually on his back as he carries her up the stairs to their room, calling over his shoulder that though he is hungry, other appetites must be fed first, and that he begs their indulgence. Clint’s eyes burn as he keeps staring. She stares back, flapping one hand dismissively at Thor and not caring whether he sees her acknowledgement or not.

“Race you to the top,” gasps Clint, and she’s already turning and sprinting for the stairs before he finishes the sentence. She leaves him behind in the living room and winds her way up the stairs to their wonderful roost at the top of the world. He’s waiting for her, standing in the middle of the room, smiling. The sliding glass door is open. He’s skipped the stairs entirely, the cheater, and monkeyed up the side of the cabin in a flash.

“I win,” he says in satisfaction. Fine, she thinks, she’s already promised him tonight anyway. She’ll get even tomorrow.

“What’s your forfeit?” she asks breathlessly.

“Take off your clothes and lie down on the bed,” he says softly. She strips, and throws herself down on top of the pretty quilt, arms behind her head, stretching luxuriously and waiting to see what he’s going to do to her. She’s expecting him to have gone for the toy bag, is quivering in anticipation of what he’s going to select from it this time. Restraints? Nipple clamps? Leather paddle? Riding crop? To her surprise, he has merely removed his own clothes and stands beside the bed, looking down at her, his gaze intense and a small smile playing at his mouth. She wants to bite it, but accepts that it’s going to be the other way around this time. He climbs onto the big bed, straddles her on all fours, his face close to hers.

“We’ll deal with the fact that you’ve been trying to provoke me most of this afternoon, later tonight,” he murmurs, smiling wickedly. She squeezes her legs together and squirms a tiny bit in anticipation. She loves owning him, but damn, he’s fucking hot when he’s toppy too. Wait, did he say tonight? What the hell?

He leans down and kisses her. It’s a soft kiss, his mouth gentle on hers, his tongue seeping sweetly in to taste her. He doesn’t use his teeth.

“I want you so much, Tasha,” he says hoarsely. She glances down. He’s not lying. His erection practically quivers between them. He kisses her between sentences, and she wiggles a little in anticipation. “I am in fucking awe of how awesome what you’ve done here is. This is…”

“Shut up,” she says roughly, her eyes slanting away.

“No,” he says stubbornly. “I have never seen Jane or Thor so happy since the first time I saw either of them, and that was quite some time before any of the rest of you ever saw them. This vacation is a stroke of fucking genius, and I am having a stupid amount of fun.” He leans down and kisses her some more. She sighs into his mouth and doesn’t argue, though he’s embarrassing her.

“There is so much I want to do with you, to you, while we’re here,” he continues, and this thrilling statement makes her toes curl. He is, after all, fucking inventive. “But it has to wait. We have time.”

She makes a small sound of frustration. He rolls to his side and lies down beside her, his body pressing against hers, his hard-on pressing insistently into her hip.

“It has to wait,” he repeats as his sensitive fingertips trail down her throat, stroke the tender skin on the insides of her arms, trickles over her belly and thighs. “Because right now, I just have to HAVE you, Tasha. Slow and deep and now.” His questing fingers dip between her legs and stroke, gently and slowly. Her thighs quiver, loosen, fall apart for him. She’s confused. This is…it’s different. It’s weird. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands, so she clenches them above her head. Noticing, because he notices everything, he reaches up and takes one of her hands, holding it and entwining her fingers with his. He rolls over her and lowers his hips between her thighs, his blunt hardness pressed against the opening of her pussy. He slowly enters her, one long slide that seats him fully. Her breath hitches. He slides almost all the way out, then again slides back in. He looks into her eyes, as the setting sun bathes the room with crimson and orange and pink, and he slowly drives her crazy with the strange sweetness of this unaccustomed loving. She feels emotion clog her throat and blinks hard, lifting her head to try to bite him, try to goad him into fast and rough and primal like she understands, like their sex always is. He won’t be swayed from this torturous sweet slow torment. She makes a sound of frustration, and he leans in for another deep kiss.

“Let me,” he whispers against her lips, his words the merest breath into her mouth. “Let me have this, Tasha. God, I want to take you, to do all kind of sick things to your body, to break you and make you mine, to hear you scream for me. But fuck…oh fuck Tasha, give me this, this time.” He’s panting a little and she feels a slow langorous heat suffusing her arms and legs and pooling in her mouth and between her legs. “So good. Christ. Tash. Tasha. Come for me. While I’m loving you, just like this. Give it to me, Tasha. Go over for me. Just like this, one time. You can. Ohgodohgod.  So good. So hot, so tight. Jesus. Not long. Come for me. Feel me in you, so deep, so good. Fuck. You’re perfect. You’re everything. Tasha. Come for me. _Ya lyublu tebya.”_

When he whispers that he loves her, in Russian, because he knows she can probably accept it in her own language even if it is too frightening in English, she raises her hips to meet him and gives him what he asks for, his name on her lips, her name on his as they fall together. He stymies her, and she’s bewildered and shaken, but does not fight the tears that well in her eyes as she comes and discovers that not only has he taught her how to let go, he has taught her it is actually possible for her to make love, and nobody even had to get hurt for him to prove it. He’s a sap, and he confuses her as often as anything else, but fuck if he’s not her sap.

He doesn’t hold her for too long. No need to get crazy with it, after all, and they both really are ravenous. They get up, and are putting on their clothes, and they hear Jane, from below.

“Oh God,” she cries, her voice is shaking and desperate and frantic. “Thor, please! Please, Thor, please!” and her voice rises on a scream and they hear him growl her name, and the entire cabin trembles a little. Outside, lightning flashes in the distance. She glances over at Clint, who is shaking with silent laughter.

“Gee, looks like rain all of a sudden,” he says with a snicker. She grins.

“Mm. Good timing though. You hungry?”

“Starved,” he says cheerfully as they head for the stairs.

“Hope Jane’s not too broken to cook, cause is she’s not, I’m guessing we’re having macaroni and cheese,” she observes.

They have steaks, cooked to perfection on the outdoor grill by Thor, because apparently roasting entire cows over huge spits has taught him a lot about charred flesh, and they eat on the deck as rain patters off the leaves of the huge trees and the forest smells like life and wet loam and leaf mold. Clint doesn’t even protest over doing the dishes, and refuses to let Thor help since he cooked, but she notices he does them in a hurry, while the rest of them lounge on the hammock and rocking chairs outside, and she catches him watching her intently. There is nothing tender in his eyes this time.

Good.


	3. Part 3

Thor

One of his hungers sated and the other at least temporarily assuaged (he will never stop hungering for Jane, will only ever manage to stave off the pangs of it in the sweetness of her flesh for a short time before it rages in him again), he is content to relax in the company of friends and open a third bottle of wine. He’s aware he’s drinking more of it than the others, but knows this means little. Midgardian fermented beverages are, in general, quite weak compared to Asgardian mead, and he has left THAT behind in New York.  He feels no more than pleasantly warm, while he suspects Jane is more than a little tipsy. This doesn’t bother him, especially since they will not be venturing out again tonight. He rather likes the effect a few drinks have on her. She is normally so sweet, shy even, and easily embarrassed. When she has imbibed enough drink to lower her inhibitions, she becomes quite different indeed.

They’re sitting strewn about the huge seating piece called a sectional sofa, drinking wine and talking about what they’re going to do on the morrow. It is agreed that they will spend the day exploring the mountains on their way to a town which is called Cherokee. This is the same as the English name for the tribe of Indians his friend Little Sparrow belongs to, and where the proposed Pow Wow is taking place. He’s looking forward to this a great deal. He hopes they see a bear! The conversation drifts lazily and comfortably from topic to topic, mostly centered about their day. Then Jane, who has now imbibed at least four glasses of wine, surprises everyone.

“So Natasha, what’s Clint going to do to you for calling him a cocky little shit?”

Everybody blinks in surprise. Though all of them are comfortable enough in their own skins to be at ease with themselves about the very NOT mainstream activities they enjoy in bed, and goodness knows Thor doesn’t even have a clue how to dissemble about it and has baldly answered a number of personal questions from Bruce and Tony regarding things Jane found mortifying, Jane is the one of them who is terribly discomfited by the subject, and who is only really able to admit what she likes when she’s lost in the midst of it. They all recover easily, though. He smiles, because she’s so charming to him when she’s feisty with drink. Clint’s grin is wicked. Natasha looks at him, sees the expression on his face, shrugs a little, and turns to Jane.

“Stuck my tongue out at him too, and patted him on the head,” she says, and makes a face at her lover. He hopes seeing them together will help Jane with her internal struggle over the more violent carnal aspects of their relationship, and how much she loves it, if she could but admit it to herself.

Clint and Natasha share some enigmatic look in which he senses that an entire unspoken conversation has occurred, especially since they not only look, their hands move in swift signs he cannot interpret. Jane is watching them both eagerly. Her eyes are bright with wine and recklessness. By the Goddess, he adores her. Then Clint is on his feet, and his hand fists in Natasha’s hair and he hauls her roughly to her feet. They’re both grinning rather wickedly at one another. Jane’s lips part a bit, and her small hand steals into his and squeezes.

“You’re so right, Jane,” purrs Clint ferociously. Natasha is failing utterly to seem either abashed or intimidated by what he now suspects is her impending comeuppance. Perhaps everyone but him is considerably more inebriated than he had believed! She is, in fact, grinning unrepentantly, and foot-sweeps her lover. They both fall hard to the floor, and Jane almost joins them as she laughs hysterically.  He cannot resist gliding his fingers through the warm brown silk of her hair, clenching his fist, and pulling her close. She gasps. He nips her plump little earlobe in his sharp teeth and whispers to her,

“Think you it is amusing to assault your man in such a way, Jane Foster?” he growls softly, and he feels her pulse thrum wildly in the throat. He wants to bite her there too, but he’ll wait, because he thinks the show here in the living room is about to get very interesting.

“Um,” says Jane vaguely, wisely choosing not to answer.

Clint is doing an admirable job of pretending not to be amused as well, though Thor can see a muscle in his jaw jumping as he chokes back a laugh. He rolls to his feet (Thor admires Clint and Natasha’s flexibility a great deal. He suspects though, that it’s possible they are simply made of springs instead of bone and muscle!) dragging Natasha with him, and has not let go of her hair. He hauls her up against him and kisses her thoroughly, feeding at her lips and throat while Jane cheers in approval beside him. Clint looks at them.

“Thor, can I get a favor?” he asks, dragging Natasha over behind their end of the sofa.

“But of course, my friend, anything!” he says heartily.

“Mind going over there to the kitchen and snagging me that rubber spatula I remember seeing in the utensil jar by the stove?” As he’s speaking, he’s shoving Natasha face-first over the back of the couch. Natasha squirms and struggles, but only so that she can reach out and snag one of the bottles of wine off an end table. She takes a huge swig and points a finger at Jane.

“Just so you know,” she says, about as close to laughter as Natasha ever is, “That what’s about to happen is ENTIRELY your fault, and we’d have been PERfectly happy to do it in the privacy of our own room later but YOU asked for it!”

“Hush, you,” says Clint, slapping her hard on her upturned backside as he accepts the spatula Thor has retrieved for him. Thor resumes his seat quickly, hauling Jane into his lap as he does so. On one hand, he doesn’t want her to be able to flee in embarrassment as the events she has set in motion unfold, and on the other hand, he just likes having her there. She doesn’t seem embarrassed at all yet, he notices. She’s watching avidly, and she squirms on his lap. He strokes his hand up her leg to rest on the inside of her thigh, the rough denim of her trousers against his palm, his thumb resting dangerously close to the warmth of her crotch. Clint pulls Natasha’s trousers down around her thighs. Thor watches appreciatively. There is no question where his heart lies, and in what bed he will continue to sleep, but he is still a man, and Natasha’s hindquarters are deliciously rounded. She has, in fact, one of the most perfect bottoms he has ever laid eyes on. The tip of his thumb brushes the seam in the crotch of Jane’s jeans. She makes a small whimpering noise that he loves, but she cannot tear her gaze away from what is happening between Clint and Natasha.

Clint leans down close to the lovely redhead’s ear.

“Want to apologize for being a brat today, lover?” he asks silkily. Natasha rolls her eyes and Jane giggles.

“In your dreams, _lover_ ,” she says. Thor hides his own smile behind his wine glass. Clint taps the spatula teasingly against her creamy flesh.

“Last chance,” he says warningly. Natasha rolls her eyes. Thor knows this is purely an exhibition for Jane’s benefit because he was witness to their wordless exchange before it began (and doesn’t think Jane was sober enough to notice), or he would think she’s showing a deplorable lack of respect for the man who loves her. “Okay,” says Clint, grinning ferociously. The spatula lands with a loud splat on Agent Romanoff’s pale bottom.  Natasha jerks a little and sucks in her breath but makes no sound. Jane’s kissable mouth is a small round O of surprise. Her bottom squirms deliciously on his lap. He wraps one arm around her to hold her still, and his thumb presses harder against the juncture between her thighs.

Watching Clint spank Natasha is both titillating and hilarious. They’re so easy with one another, so completely unabashed in the outrageousness of what they’re doing. He admires their candor, and chuckles at their interaction. Clint scolds her, and she pouts ridiculously, then curses at him when he brings the spatula down especially hard. They’re both having an enormously good time putting on a show for Jane. Thor’s impressed with Natasha’s capacity for pain. She’s still smiling, though her nether regions are positively crimson. Jane cannot tear her eyes from them. Were she sober, he knows she would be doing her best to flee the room, and failing that would be burying her face against his chest in mortification. She is not sober, and the exhibition has her enraptured and no little bit aroused as well. He can feel the heat from her sex against his thigh. The spanking continues for several minutes, at the end of which Natasha is gasping and Clint is so visibly aroused that Thor wonders he does not divest himself of his trousers and take her immediately. Jane is making small eager sounds in her throat.

“ _Unnghh,_ ” groans Natasha, wriggling madly while Clint positively flails at her tender flesh. “God. Enough. Jesus, Barton!”

“Something to say?” asks Clint ferociously, striking her harder.

“Fuuuucckkk. Okay. I’m sorry! OW! Shit. Clint!”

“Hmm?” he asks absently, and doesn’t stop spanking her. Jane presses her heat against his thumb, and he obliges by pressing harder.

“Motherfucker!”

“What did you just call me?” he purrs dangerously, and the spatula smacks her on the thigh.

“OUCH! Not you! Jesus! It was… _ah_ …just an expression! I’m sorry I was a smartass. Please…. _ohfuck_ …please stop!”

Clint does so, immediately, gently rubbing Natasha’s reddened backside. Jane squirms some more in sympathy.

“Oh. My. God,” she whispers. “That was…that was _hot.”_ Thor agrees. Clint helps Natasha pull her pants up, and kisses her gently. Thor hears him whisper to her.

“You okay Tash?”

Natasha rubs the seat of her own pants briskly.

“I’m fine. But tomorrow?”

“Hhm?” He’s brushing his lips over her throat softly. Thor sees gooseflesh pebble her fine porcelain skin.

“You’re a dead man,” she promises fervently. Clint smiles dazzlingly, and winks at Thor. The ease with which the two of them somersault between dominance and submission mystifies him a bit. He did find letting Jane have her way with him that one evening to be exciting, but it had maddened him, and he does not think he would enjoy it on a regular basis. He would do anything for her, including letting her bind him with bonds made of leather and his own oaths, but his joy in it had come from how pleased with herself she had been, how much it had thrilled her, and with the confidence she had gained from it. He thinks men had not been kind to Jane before she met him, and that she had questioned her desirability as a woman, which he finds to be a travesty. How no man ever managed to tap the deep well of sensuality within her before, he doesn’t know. Perhaps most Midgardian men are simply fools.

They have moved to the upper deck of the cabin and are relaxing in the device Natasha calls a “hot tub.” It is almost exactly like the hot springs of home, and that it is situated out of doors as they are, makes the experience even more familiar. No one has brought a bathing suit, but this is not a problem. He’s not self-conscious about nudity, and apparently neither are Clint or Natasha. Jane, on the other hand, is very shy. His awareness of this fact makes her actions all the more shocking. She laughs a little wildly when everyone begins to disrobe. She takes a gulp of her wine, watching him removing his clothing with her dark eyes hungering.

“So pretty,” she murmurs happily. “Isn’t he pretty, Nastasha?”

Natasha takes the question as an excuse to give him a long, lingering gaze of appraisal, starting at his feet and wandering slowly upwards. On his planet, to be perused so by a woman is a compliment, so he does not mind.

“He’s fucking gorgeous,” agrees Natasha easily. She and Clint are already in the hot tub, and his arm is around her shoulder. Thor isn’t sure where Hawkeye’s other hand is, but Natasha yelps after making this observation. He grins at Clint, who laughs.

“If I didn’t know you were totally gone over Jane already, Thor,” says the archer glibly, “I’d be climbing out of this hot tub right now to kick your ass.” Thor laughs back at the utter absurdity of this claim.

“Yup. Fucking gorgeous. And he’s alllll mine,” says Jane happily. Whereupon she shucks off her clothes like nobody’s watching and follows him unselfconsciously into the hot tub. Clint’s eyebrows go up.

“Did somebody put something in the wine?” he asks curiously.

“Hush, Clint,” says Jane with a giggle. “We’re on vacation. It’s like fight club.”

Thor has no idea what this rather bizarre claim means, and looks at Clint for help.

“Movie,” clarifies Clint helpfully. “About illegal underground fighting.  Had a motto. What you see in fight club, what you do in fight club, stays in fight club. Or something like that.”

“Ah,” says Thor wisely. “And is this also a rule that applies to vacations?”

“Apparently,” says Natasha. “Because do you want her to stop?”

He really doesn’t. This is a side of Jane he has never seen. He’s fascinated and wildly aroused by her. Well. He always is aroused by her. But this reckless abandon is so unlike her, and so interesting, that he’s hopelessly and shamelessly enamored of her all over again. He pulls her onto his lap. She wriggles and squirms in his arms like an eel until she’s facing him instead of looking across the bubbling water at Clint and Natasha. She places her knees on either side of his hips and his rapidly burgeoning arousal brushes her sex. She sucks in her breath and kisses him. She tastes like wine and steamy sweat. He licks her bottom lip and sucks is gently into his mouth. She moans and her hips arch towards him in wordless appeal.  He may not have the archer’s uncanny aim, but he also is adept at hitting what he’s aiming at, especially within melee distance, and it only takes a small adjustment until the head of his cock nudges at her opening. He settles his hands firmly on her waist and pulls her down, sliding into her with aching slowness. She whines into his mouth. The bubbling water and chemicals it contains wash away some of her natural lubrication, so he has to force his way in a little. He feels that he stretches her more than usual, that it is more difficult for her inner walls to accommodate his girth. She’s so tight around him it almost hurts, and he feels a growl of pleasure rumble in his chest.

“Thor,” she gasps. Her voice is strained, and he would concern himself with harming her were it not for the fact that she’s also shoving herself down onto him hard.

“Hurts?” he murmurs against her lips. She pants and whimpers and nods, struggling to join herself to him fully. “Good,” he says with satisfaction, rolling his hips upwards, gaining another fraction of depth and dragging a pained sound from him. He glances over her shoulder at Clint and Natasha. They’re watching, and as both their hands are out of sight beneath the frothing water and both are breathing heavily, he does not doubt what their hands are doing. He knows on one level that Jane will probably be horrified in the morning to realize that she’s engaged in carnal relations with him in front of their friends, but just now he cannot bring himself to care. Once he is seated inside her and feels her pressed fully against his body, her natural lubrication is able to compensate a bit more. He fills her so completely that there isn’t room inside her for even a single drop of water to seep in. She’s sealed to him, rocking against him and breathing heavily as she grinds her small body hard against him. Her small marvelous quim grips him like a fist, squeezing and milking his cock. He wraps his arms around her hot, wet body and rolls his hips against her. He takes and handful of her wet hair and presses his mouth close to her ear.

“So hot for me, Jane,” he whispers, and feels her shiver. “Such a wanton, naughty girl you are tonight.”

“Yes,” she pants.

“Shall I spank you later, Jane,” he continues, his breath hitching in his chest when she convulses around him and mewls helplessly. “Shall I turn you over my lap and punish you for being such a naughty thing?”

“God. Thor,” she whimpers.

“Shall I, my heart? Shall I fetch that spatula from the kitchen before we retire and sting your delicious arse with it, over…” he thrusts upwards hard, and she squeaks. “…and over…” Another vicious heave, and she cries out. He thinks she has probably forgotten their friends’ presence entirely. “….and _hnn_ over?”

“I…oh!”

“Shall I use my other hand to finger inside you hard and fast, where you ache inside from what we do this moment, while you whimper and squirm and beg me not to spank you anymore? Shall I… _gods_ …shall I _fuck_ you after, from behind? ‘Twill hurt Jane, for you are going to be very sore when we are done…. _mmnn_ …here.”

“Yes,” she moans softly, “to _ah_ all of it.” Her small nails dig viciously into his shoulders. He sets his teeth in the bend where her neck and shoulder join and clamps down, snarling ferociously, mindlessly, when her inner walls quiver and clench with her release, and she cries out. He joins her moments later, groaning softly, knowing his teeth are leaving a mark that will bruise and not caring one whit.

As his eyes struggle to refocus, he sees Clint’s head disappear beneath the frothing surface of the steaming water, and Natasha throws her head back, sucking in her breath sharply. He takes Jane, who is boneless and shaking against him, into his arms and stands up, slipping out of her as he does so. Both of them hiss as their chafed intimate parts protest. Water sluices off them. He steps out, carrying her, nods courteously to Natasha, who cannot see him, and takes her down the stairs to their chamber, where he dries them both off gently and slides into bed with her. She snuggles against him contentedly, and he’s happy to wait a bit. The spatula isn’t going anywhere.

 

Clint

He’s never considered himself much of an exhibitionist or a voyeur, but he has to be honest with himself. It was a little bit of a heady feeling that Natasha let him spank her in front of their friends. He understands why she did it, and because he knows she was doing it for Jane and not for either of them, he hadn’t made it too intense. But fuck, he’d gotten off on it a lot more than he’d have thought he would. He’s not stopping to dissect that yet. Maybe it was just powerful because it’s amazing that she trusts him enough to risk a scene like that in front of anybody. And then, watching Jane and Thor’s little encounter had been…just…well hell. He doesn’t think it makes him even the slightest bit gay to admit to himself that part of what made watching that so fucking hot had been that they are so damn gorgeous. Yeah, both of them. There’s something extremely primal about Thor, to a much deeper extent than any human being he knows, and you just can’t help noticing it. To see him let it slip its leash, to watch him just…hell, there isn’t another word for it, just MATING with her like he is some kind of huge golden perfect beast, it’s an awesome sight. Jane’s a lovely woman. Thor is fucking beautiful. Like a marble statue carved by a Master, hard and gleaming and perfection. It isn’t like he wants to fuck him, because he doesn’t, and Natasha would kill him anyway, probably with a leftover piece of fried chicken. He’s just comfortable enough with his own masculinity to admit that the guy is freaking gorgeous, and he’s gotten so hard watching them fuck that he’s not going to be able to control himself a lot longer. The hand that’s between Natasha’s legs stroking and pinching at her clit convulses a little as he shudders. Her hand clenches harder on his aching cock and he can’t do it, can’t wait. He takes hold of her wrist, pulls her off him. Shifts so he’s facing her. Her pupils are dilated. Sweat beads on her upper lip and forehead. She’s so beautiful, damp and needy and flushed. Her wet curls tangle on her neck and cheeks. Her lips are parted and she’s breathing heavily. He keeps his eyes pinned to hers as he slowly sinks beneath the water, taking a deep breath as he goes under, and then he closes them against the bubble and swirl of the roiling water. His fingers spread her pussy open and he fastens his mouth to her, licking and suckling at her swollen clit. He feels the muscles in her thighs quiver as she closes them gently around his head. He imagines how it must feel to her. His mouth is cooler than the water. The temp in here is over a hundred degrees, much warmer than body temperature. The feeling is interesting, and titillating. There isn’t just the moisture from her body; he’s completely surrounded by hot wet. The salt of her and the clean chemical taste of the chlorinated water is an interesting contrast. He doesn’t tease her; he focuses on trying to make her come before he has to go up for breath. He figures he can probably hold it for about three minutes. He slides a finger inside her, and flickers his tongue over her clit as fast as he can, keeping the pressure and the rhythm just right. Using just the right amount of teeth. He feels her when she comes, though the roar of the hot tub’s motor drowns out any sound she makes. Because he is robbed of all senses save taste and touch, he’s utterly consumed by the feel of her coming on his tongue and around his finger, the slight tremble inside her as it approaches, then the rippling contractions of her inner muscles clamped around his finger, the way her clit throbs. As the last quivers subside, he pushes to the surface, gasping explosively. Thor and Jane have left. He hadn’t noticed when they did so. Tasha is gasping, her eyes a little glazed, her head lolling back on the rim of the tub. Her fantastic breasts float on the surface. He takes a nipple into his mouth and sucks hard. She gasps loudly, and her fingers come up to twine lazily through his drenched hair. He bites down slowly, sucking her nipple deeply into his mouth. He puts more and more pressure into his teeth, gradually intensifying the bite until at last, when his teeth have almost met inside her flesh, but short of breaking skin, he hears her cry out in pain. He backs off, panting.

“Get up,” he says harshly, getting to his feet in front of her. The cool air after his submersion in the very hot water gives him goose bumps. Before she complies, Tasha leans forward and sucks his rock-hard cock deeply into her mouth. Her tongue swirls around the sensitive head, and he throws his head back, groaning hoarsely. She lets his erection out of her mouth with a pop, the stands up. “Over the deck rail,” he grits out. “Now.”

She complies without a word. He watches her. Her ass is still red from the spanking, darker red than the heat flush in the rest of her skin. She bends over the rail, hanging on, arching her back and opening her legs. He steps to her, trickles his hands up the backs of her legs and over the reddened skin of her spanked backside. He reaches down with one hand and positions himself at her entrance, shoving in with a hard snap of his hips. She cries out, her voice rolling out down the mountainside to echo back to them. She’s so tight inside from her orgasm. Jesus, it may kill him. He looks out, into the velvet darkness, down to the ancient rocks and trees, into the endless spangle of stars revealed now that the Thor-induced rain has passed. There is nothing but sky above him. As he fucks into her with vicious sharp jabs, and she moans and gasps and cries out for him, it is like being encompassed by something massive and ageless and yet also pulsing with life. His fingers dig into her hips. God. He wonders if the wanting ever ends. Will he be this desperate for her in a month? A year? Ten? He thinks he will. He leans his head back, and stars dazzle his vision, seeming to swirl and draw him up into them. The velvety wet glove of her quivering pussy gripping his cock is his only anchor to reality. He plows into her mindlessly, knowing he’s hurting both of them, and not caring. She’s shoving herself back onto him now, using the rail as leverage, and the slap of their bodies against each other with each brutal thrust is like the crack of a whip in his ears. She screams as another orgasm takes her, convulsing her bruised insides around him, and he shouts into the sky when he comes too moments later. It is exactly like flying.


	4. Part 4

Jane

The sound of the curtains being pulled back is almost as piercing as the morning sun prying rudely at her lids. She rolls over and buries her face in the pillow, making protesting noises. It’s insane to even think about getting up yet. God, her head hurts. Actually now that she thinks about it, a lot of her hurts.  Her wrists and ankles are sore. Her insides feel a little like they’ve been bludgeoned with a club wrapped in sandpaper. Several places on her body throb with bruises. She dares a glance under the covers at one of the throbbing spots on her right breast and finds a perfect imprint of teeth which have turned a rather impressive purple color. And Jesus, her ass is sore. Outside, not in. She glances blearily at the clock radio on the bedside table, sees that it’s 7 A.M. and groans a little, then registers the rubber spatula lying jauntily on the stand in front of the clock.

Last night comes crashing back to her in one momentous rush. Goading Clint and Natasha into an impressive little exhibition. Oh God, had she really done that? The hot tub…oh. Oh no. They hadn’t…she couldn’t have…oh God, she remembers it all. In front of their friends! No no no. That wasn’t her. She doesn’t DO things like that. It explains the deep soreness in her pussy though. That and what had happened later, which isn’t so humiliating because at least they hadn’t had a FUCKING AUDIENCE for it. She remembers him spanking her, and not being still for it, writhing and struggling and…had she really KICKED him? She thinks he’d used pantyhose to tie her to the bed. Has vague memories of tugging with all her might against them as he’d gleefully peppered her bottom with the nasty sting of the spatula. Isn’t positive she said it out loud but remembers that she’d begged him to stop. And not to. Even though she’d cried. Had still been doing it when he’d taken her, again, laughing while she howled at him and writhed in pain and sobbed. And came again and again. Ok, she’s just going to focus on that, and the hangover, and not…. In FRONT of their FRIENDS? She whimpers and pulls the covers over her head.

The covers are yanked entirely off the bed a few seconds later by a naked and entirely too cheerful Thor, who scoops her up bodily even though she yells at him to put her down and pounds at him fruitlessly with her fists, though he does pause to enquire whether she’d like another spanking this morning. She wouldn’t. She becomes aware of water running a few seconds before he steps into the enormous shower with her.  She moans as the hot water hits her bruises and raw bite marks. She hears his breath hiss between his teeth and notices at last that he’s sporting a few rather impressive dental impressions himself. Good. Her moan of pain turns to one of pleasure when he gently rubs shampoo into her hair and massages her throbbing head. He washes her all over, his touch feather light and loving. Her mortification makes her refuse to look at him until his finger forces her chin up.

“Look at me, Jane,” he says softly but insistently, his voice a low bass rumble. She shakes her head as best she can. He simply waits patiently until she complies at last. His blue eyes are amused, loving, kind. “Are you well, Love?” he asks.

“No,” she croaks.

“I feared the wine you consumed last eve might give you a sore head this morning. Do not worry. I shall prepare for you the potion my mother prepares for my father on the mornings following our feasts. I understand it tastes horrible, but it seems to work wonders.”

“Oh yay,” she whispers sarcastically. His lips quirk up in a smile.

“However, I expected the sore head. I was asking whether you are…harmed.”

She sighs, shakes her head no, then steps into his arms when he opens them and hides her face in his hot steamy skin as he finishes washing her, then himself. He turns off the shower, dries her gently with a huge fluffy towel, and tells her to go get dressed as they’ll be departing for the mountains in less than an hour. She gets back in bed and pulls the covers over her head again.

He laughs when he sees her, she can hear him through the muffling layers of the sheets and blanket and quilt.

“It’s not funny!” she yells at him, which makes him laugh more.

“Get dressed, Jane,” he says again, and who the hell made him boss anyway?

“I’m staying here,” she pouts. There is no way she is ever looking Clint and Natasha in the eye again. Ever. She squeaks in alarm when the blankets are ripped off her for the second time this morning. Thor, in faded blue jeans, boots and a royal blue t-shirt with a plaid flannel work shirt unbuttoned over it, looks down at her in amusement that is starting to get a tiny bit impatient.

“No,” he says with finality. “You are not. We are driving to Cherokee this day, and experiencing the beauty of these mountains of smoke on our way to join my friend Little Sparrow and her people for their strangely titled feast this night. You will get dressed Jane.”

“I can’t,” she wails, trying to pull the blankets from his grasp, which is rather like trying to pull an elephant by its trunk to somewhere it doesn’t want to go. He frowns, then his face clears suddenly and he sits down beside her, hauling her onto his lap. His body is vibrating with suppressed laughter, which she thinks is just mean.

“Jane,” he says gently, his big hand stroking over her hair and down her back as though gentling a skittish horse. “Do not be embarrassed.”

“How can you SAY that?” she cries piteously. “You know what I did!”

“I’m rather pleased to say I experienced it firsthand,” he says with a grin. “But Jane, tis well. The water frothed so that Clint and Natasha saw naught but your back. They were too busy with one another to pay us any heed at all, I can assure you. I was facing them.”

She peers at him suspiciously, trying to ascertain whether he’s lying or not. Decides he probably is, but that the thought that their friends had been too busy to pay attention to her horrifyingly wanton display of lust and hot tub sex is something she can seize hold of and believe in order to let herself face the day.

“Besides,” he says softly, silkily, menacingly. “If you do not get out of this bed and don your clothing this instant, I shall turn you over my knee and apply that spatula to your arse again. Thoroughly.” He kisses her sweetly, then nips her lip sharply and sets her on her feet, turning her towards the dresser where she put her clothing with a sharp slap on her still-sensitive backside. She yelps, and goes reluctantly to fetch an outfit for the day, glaring resentfully over her shoulder at him as she rubs away the sting. He’s staring at her like she’s breakfast, and she REALLY doesn’t think she can take him in her again so soon, so she hurries.

To her immense relief, neither Clint nor Natasha mentions the previous night, though she has to work a little to ignore a couple of appraising glances and one or two smirks. And grits her teeth against a whimper when Clint pats her on the butt while she’s stirring eggs. Bastard. Thor makes a warning sound in his throat that reminds her a little of something huge with fangs and claws, so Clint doesn’t touch her again.

At long last, fortified with eggs, toast, bacon and something truly foul-tasting she’d been forced to drink and which she refuses to admit makes her feel not just  better but fucking great, they pile into the Hummer and head for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park entrance at the West end of Gatlinburg. Thor and Clint are wearing their coonskin caps again. They’re probably two of the hottest guys she’s ever seen in her life and yet are also impossibly adorable right now. Natasha does one of her characteristic eye-rolls but Jane can tell she thinks so too. She’s also gratified not to be the only one who winces a little when her ass makes contact with the SUV’s seat. It’s only a little though. And thinking about it makes her hide a smile. It’s nothing like so bad as the time he’d spanked her for real. It isn’t any different than being really sore the next day from rough and satisfying sex. Which they also had.

It doesn’t take long to reach the park entrance. She forces (ha) Natasha to stop the truck so she can take pictures of everybody in front of the sign. She looks at the picture of herself and Thor that Clint has taken for them on the screen of her digital camera, wrapped in each other’s arms, their eyes bright with love and laughter. He doesn’t look like a god or a superhero. He looks like a man who loves her. A very large, muscular, unbelievably handsome man, true, but just a man. The picture is perfect.

They wind their way deeper into the park and higher into the mountains, stopping from time to time to get out and enjoy a breathtaking view or some historical site. Clingman’s Dome is one of the more amazing things she’s ever seen. She’s been to the Grand Canyon, and it’s awe inspiring. This is too, but in a different way.

“It feels so old,” she whispers, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering a little. The altitude here makes the air a little chilly, especially with Fall fast approaching.

“They are like some great ancient giant,” agrees Thor, holding her against him and resting his chin on the top of her head. “Often they slumber, yet one senses they are not unaware. They are wise, and old as time itself.”

Sometimes he really surprises her.

They stop for lunch at one of many picnic areas. She’s packed sandwiches (four ham, four turkey, four peanut butter and jelly, four fluffernutter which is Thor’s favorite and he doesn’t let anybody else have one), chips (several full-sized bags), fruit (a dozen apples and two whole bunches of grapes), cookies (two bags of Chips Ahoy, two bags of Nutter Butter and two bags of Mint Milano), and a big bag of assorted candy miniatures. Clint pokes fun at her overpreparedness until he has to fight Thor for a cookie. It is only his lightning reflexes that allow him to retrieve one and not draw back a bloody stump. His earlier jab of “Gee Jane, did you pack enough food?” expressed with sarcasm is revised to, “Geez Jane, I don’t think you packed enough food!”

Though there are not many leftovers, there are enough crumbs for the nearly tame squirrels and birds who have clearly learned that this is the hot dining spot for enterprising wildlife in the area. Thor is enchanted. There are no squirrels on Asgard. Their domesticated animals are very similar, and they have things much like wolves, but no squirrels. One snatches a bit of cookie out of Natasha’s hand and Jane thinks she almost hears the Black Widow laugh.

“This’d be like shooting fish in a barrel,” jokes Clint. Jane turns on him to berate his cold-heartedness for even thinking about shooting the cute little squirrels. The words die on her lips. A squirrel is sitting in the palm of Hawkeye’s outstretched hand, busily nibbling away at a bread crust. He is as still as a statue, and staring at it with a silly smile on his face. They have all been so consumed with thoughts of death, mayhem, and saving the world for so long that she thinks they had completely forgotten how enchanting simple things can be. Thinks maybe Clint and Natasha have never known.

They go for a hike after lunch. There’s a trail here that leads back a mile or so to what is supposed to be the remains of an old settlement. Jane reads on the sign that one of the cabins and a mill have been restored. The forest is cool and dark. The trees are huge, and rhododendron bushes are everywhere.

“It looks like a lot of them,” says Natasha casually when Jane comments on it. “But they’re really all part of one single enormous plant, like a single organism that covers the whole Appalacian mountain chain.”

Everyone stares at her.

“What?” she says, hunching her shoulders defensively. “I read!”

“I knew you were brilliant,” says Clint, making her kiss him even though she punches him in the stomach for it. “I knew you spoke like twelve languages and played nine instruments and knew four forms of martial arts and three kinds of dance and how to fly almost anything with wings and how to fix a transmission or an engine or the plumbing. I didn’t know you also knew botany.”

“Fourteen,” mutters Natasha darkly. “I speak fourteen languages. And I can kill you in all of them.”

“Awesome,” says Clint contentedly, holding her hand (either to be romantic or because that way he knows where it is at all times, who can tell.) “You can talk dirty to me in Farsi later while you make me pay for the botany comment.”

Natasha says something in what Jane assumes is Farsi.

“Gonna have to translate for me though,” he adds cheerfully.

“I said I’ll tear out your intestines and wear them as jewelry while I dance in your spilled blood,” she supplies. Clint wisely chooses not to reply.

Jane, who hadn’t known any of those things about Natasha, is glad they are already friends or she’d be even more intimidated by her now. Fuck, that is one scary lady! Her estimation of Clint’s courage ratchets up from astonishing to terrifyingly courageous.

The hike is wonderful. She feels the cabin fever she’s been operating under for weeks washing away like dust in water. She can tell they feel the same, knows that it’s even more of an escape for the others. Mainly because it’s probably the first time in ages that they’ve been able to escape at all, except for that which they find in their respective lovers’ arms. Thor stops, bends down and breaks off a pink and white flower and tucks it behind her ear with a brush of his lips against hers.

They’re grinning into each other’s faces like teenagers, not really paying too much attention to where they’re walking, when she hears as strange huffing groaning sound. Thor’s body tenses and he thrusts her behind him instinctively. She hears Clint and Natasha’s footsteps still behind them. Up ahead, right beside the trail, a black bear is rummaging through a trash can the park service has installed along the trail in an effort to help prevent litter. Jane has seen these garbage cans before. They’re enclosed steel drums with a pull-down mouth for a lid, which is on springs and closes itself automatically even if the user neglects to close it. The bear holds the door open by its steel handle with one paw while it scoops up trash with the other paw. Perhaps it can’t read the sign on the front of the can, Jane thinks inanely. The one proudly emblazoned across it which says “Bear-Proof Garbage Can! Please Dispose of All Litter Here!”

“Jane,” whispers Thor excitedly. “What is that?” Only the lower half of the animal is actually visible.

“It’s a bear,” she breathes faintly.

“Back up very slowly,” whispers Natasha.

“Don’t take your eyes off it, and don’t make any sudden moves, and we should just be able to get out of here safely,” advises Clint in a low voice. Thor looks around at all of them in confusion.

“Why?” he asks curiously, neglecting entirely to whisper. The bear makes a startled sound and jerks its head out of the garbage can. It spins on its haunches to face them, and glares suspiciously out of its small reddish-brown eyes, wondering if they’re here to take its garbage can away. It doesn’t seem inclined to want to share, instead rising up on its hind legs. It roars defiantly at them, and there’s no doubt in Jane’s mind what its saying.

“This is MY bear- proof can, you fuckers! If you want it…come and take it!”

“Look!” says Thor. “He is greeting us!” He roars back at the bear, who ceases making noise abruptly for a few seconds, a slightly startled expression on its face. Encouraged, Thor roars again. Jane is amazed. She had no idea he had a talent for animal mimicry. She tends to think ridiculous things when staring death in the face.

“Thor,” says Clint urgently, “I don’t think he wants to be friends. Bears kill people every year.”

Thor is suddenly very intent on the bear, though he spares Clint a brief glance to make sure he is serious. He’s very serious. Though the deaths of hikers and campers are almost never the bear’s fault but are almost always caused by humans foolishly thinking bears are cute or funny, and feeding them despite hundreds of warnings to the contrary, the deaths do still occur.

Thor has apparently said something very rude to the bear in its own language, because it drops to all fours and makes a horrible, throbbing sound much like a cross between a bellow and a pig’s squeal. Its head hangs low, waving back and forth while its claws churn up dirt and forest loam and foam drips from its teeth. It charges. Jane screams, and Thor shoves her backwards. She stumbles, and would fall, except Clint catches her in his arms and pulls her behind him. Natasha draws a knife from a sheath in one of her boots, grabbing Jane by the arm and holding on.

“Stay still,” she hisses furiously.

With a huge feral grin on his face, Thor steps forward to meet the charging bear. It hurls itself at him like a linebacker, its muscular haunches digging deep into the ground. He wraps his arms around it as it goes to savage him, hoisting it up in a huge – ha – bear hug. Jane wails in terror and denial as it clamps its jaws down on his shoulder and shakes its head vigorously, savaging him. Thor ignores its teeth and begins to squeeze. The muscles in his arms bulge like soccer balls. He spreads his legs and plants his feet firmly, paying no attention to the bear’s claws as they rake his body. His back is rigid, and his ridiculous coonskin cap falls off. The bear is making the most hideous sounds Jane has ever heard. She wants to scream for Thor to save himself, to run, but she’s learned too recently and too painfully not to interfere while he’s fighting, so she grips Natasha’s hand and bites her lip. The coppery tang of blood and the acrid, sour tang of bear fill the air. Thor is shouting something in his own language, interspersed with curses he must have learned from Tony, because nobody else finds it funny to try to get him to include shockingly foul words in everyday conversation. Jane thinks she hears him tell the bear to fuck itself sideways, though she’s not sure.

She gradually becomes aware that Natasha is shaking like a leaf. This frightens her even more than watching what the bear is doing to her lover, because if Natasha is afraid, then things are much worse than she’s even imagining, and she imagines they look very bad indeed. Thor’s back is to them, but she can only think the bear’s claws must have eviscerated him by now. There’s something dark and wet splattered all over the dirt and leaves at his feet, and he’s yelling hoarsely over the bear’s squeals of rage. In agony. Oh God. She looks around wildly for something to throw at the bear. She can’t just stand here and watch it kill him, she can’t. Painful lessons in letting superheroes fight the battles on their own aside, she’s not going to just stand here and let this happen, because obviously Clint has no idea what to do and Natasha’s too scared to do it. She turns to look at her friend, tugging to get her hand free and sees at once why Natasha’s shaking.

She’s laughing. Jane’s jaw drops is stunned disbelief. Natasha is laughing so hard her whole body shakes with it. What the hell is wrong with her? Can’t she see what’s happening?

“What’s wrong with you?” Jane screams, outraged. Natasha blinks at her, looks from Thor and the bear to Jane and back again, then grabs Jane roughly by the chin and turns her head towards the grisly scene.

“Look,” she orders heartlessly.

“I can see it,” she shrieks. “It’s killing him! DO SOMETHING!”

Natasha shakes her head and snorts in mirth.

“Jane. Fucking LOOK. With your damn eyes.”

Jane notices that Clint is laughing too and wonders if there’s any possibility of killing both of them while they sleep. Then she does what Natasha says.

The bear is still making the hideous squealing noise. Its piggy eyes are bugged out in rage. Foam and froth spray from its mouth. Its tongue protrudes obscenely, flopping about like a long pink eel. At least it isn’t biting him anymore.

It….isn’t biting him anymore. She thinks maybe bears’ tongues don’t actually hang out of their mouths that far when they’re attacking someone. Or…ever. Peering closer she thinks it’s just barely possible the bear isn’t actually raking Thor with its claws at all, but is instead flailing them in terror. Its hind paws, in fact, unable to get purchase on the forest floor, are pedaling wildly in the air as if it’s trying very hard to ride an invisible unicycle. Possibly.  Also, it isn’t blood on the ground. She thinks…sniffing the air tentatively, she thinks it’s….urine. The bear has pissed itself.

Thor drops the bear to the ground and staggers back from it a step. The bear lies stunned for a few seconds and then reels drunkenly to its feet, banging against a tree trunk as it trips over a root. Clint howls with laughter as the confused creature looks up at the crazed madman who has just squeezed the life half out of it, peering dazedly at the god of thunder as though it expects him to fall upon it and eat it. It is wheezing badly, and its small eyes are wide with terror. It heaves back and forth a few more times like a drunk passenger on a cruise ship, bawling in terror, then it shakes itself. It whirls on its hind legs and flees up the path as though demons were on its heels, glancing back over its shoulder apprehensively as though it expects the insane fiend to change its mind about letting it go.

Thor turns to them with a wry expression on his face, looking down at his jeans and boots which are splattered liberally with bear pee. He wipes at a cut on his arm where the bear’s teeth actually did break skin, but Jane can see it’s already closing.

“You were correct, my friend,” says Thor to Clint ruefully, picking up his coonskin cap and brushing it off.

“About what?”

“The bear did not wish to be friends.”

 

Natasha

Well. After the bear encounter, there’s just no way there is anything else in the mountains that can compare. They hike back to the truck and pile in, still laughing about the horrified expression on the poor bear’s face. It’s too bad there aren’t any bears on Asgard. She thinks if this whole thunder god gig doesn’t work out for him, Thor could have a good future as a bear wrestler. She cranks up the Hummer and pulls back onto the parkway, then slams on the brakes as the pungent odor from the back seat assails her nostrils.

“Christ,” she swears, as her eyes start to water. Her hand slaps blindly at the window controls, slips off, then manages to push the buttons the right way. Clint is laughing at her like a loon. She glares at him, then glares at Thor in the rearview mirror. “The next time you decide to wrestle a bear, asshole,” she snarls, “bring your own fucking car.”

“It’s a little cold back here, Natasha,” says Jane tentatively as they proceed onwards.

“Tough shit. Your boyfriend the bearkiller smells like piss.” This only makes Clint laugh harder. “What is wrong with you?” she demands irritably. “Can’t you smell that? It’s horrible!” He controls himself and grins at her with his best shit-eating grin.

“Tash, I grew up in the circus. You should smell tiger piss.”

They drive the rest of the way to Cherokee with the windows down, and stop at the very first shop in town to buy Thor an extremely overpriced pair of jeans and shoes. She doesn’t care if they cost a thousand bucks. She’s not riding anywhere else with him smelling like that. He doesn’t seem to begrudge the expense, and though he refuses to throw his new boots away, he does agree to seal them inside half a dozen garbage bags, which conceals the odor sufficiently. He seems enamored of the pair of leather moccasin boots he replaces them with anyway, and when he makes all of them find a pair in their own size and preferred color (his are dark chocolate brown, Jane’s are a buff color so pale as to be almost white…she and Clint, predictably, choose black) she decides he’s not wrong. The soft suede laces snugly up the calves as though molded to them. The soles are soft and pliable, and she can feel what she’s walking on in surprising detail without feeling like her feet are unprotected, and they’re like walking on clouds. The fringes around the ankles barely brush the ground, and she sees immediately that if you’re walking on soft ground, they’ll obscure your footprints so you’d be harder to track. Ingenious. The fringes around the calves don’t seem to serve any practical purpose, but she likes the way they sway.  Maybe the bear did them a favor after all.

They cruise through cheesy souvenir shops and buy more t-shirts. She hates to shop. She shops only when a mission requires it. Or on pain of death. This doesn’t really feel like shopping, even though they keep buying shit. Jane keeps getting earrings and crap. Thor doesn’t seem to have any particular criteria, unless it is to buy every damn thing that catches his eye. Or anybody else’s. She pads around silently in her excellent moccasins and looks at knives. See, she’d totally be able to get behind this shopping thing if it always involved instruments of death, and for some reason every souvenir shop in the entire Smoky Mountains seems to sell knives of some kind. It as if they knew she was coming.

Before evening, they buy tickets for a place called Oconoluftee Village. Apparently this is a recreation of a Cherokee village from hundreds of years ago, with replica structures and demonstrations of authentic crafts and junk. What the hell. It sounds vaguely interesting.

Though she’s pretty sure most of the structures are actually pretty pale comparisons to the real thing, she finds herself surprised and intrigued. There are no tipis or anything like that to be seen. The Cherokee, she learns, were mostly a sedentary people who built permanent homes of logs, pine boughs, and hide. Their homes were round instead of square like a log cabin, which made them stand up to heavy winds better, and had conical roofs which shed snow more readily than a peaked roof. They also dug their floors down below the ground, she realizes when they step inside one and have to step down, which answers her confusion as to why the buildings look so short. At various stations they stop to watch people weaving cloth, making beads, burning out a dugout canoe with embers from a nearby fire, constructing fish traps by a stream, weaving baskets from reeds and grasses, and firing pottery in a dirt kiln. Every one of the craftspeople are dressed in authentic Cherokee clothing, which to her additional surprise consists of very little leather. The Indians of this region wove cloth of cotton and hemp fiber, and wore shirts and skirts and trousers that look pretty much like regular clothes, except more colorful. At one of the stations, a man is hollowing out long straight sections of bamboo with a slender pointed stick while another man painstakingly wraps thread around cattail fuzz on small whittled wood darts. They’re making blowguns, which the tour group learns were hunting weapons prized by the Cherokee for being able to bring meat to the table even when larger game was scarce. Every Cherokee hunter had to be skilled with its use, and took great pride in his prowess. Clint is fascinated. Which surprises her exactly not at all. When the man demonstrates the weapon by taking a huge breath, puffing out his cheeks and expelling it explosively, she is startled to see that the dart travels in the blink of an eye to plunk soundlessly into a target stained in what looks like berry juice on a tree about 30 feet away. The craftsman smiles and asks if anyone would like to try it. A couple of kids raise their hands, and he shows them what to do, and everybody laughs when their huffing and puffing has little effect. One of them manages to shoot the dart at least a short distance, and everybody claps. Clint steps up to the man and holds out his hand.

“I’d like to try it,” he says with a smile. The craftsman looks him up and down for a second, sizing him up, then nods and hands him a longer blowgun and a couple of the darts. Clint hefts it in his hand, holds it up to his eye and looks down the length of the bamboo. Apparently satisfied, he inserts the dart and brings it to his lips. His chest expands as he inhales. There is a tiny Puff sound as he fires the dart, and it appears, quivering, buried in the dead center of the target. It is followed in quick succession by the second dart. When he hands the bamboo back to the craftsman, who looks like he could be about a thousand years old and has braids the color and texture of bleached cotton, bows his head slowly in respect. Clint’s eyes shine like the sun.

“I’m getting me one of those,” he murmurs in her ear as the tour continues. She imagines him for a few minutes, lurking in rafters and perched on I-beams in the tower, sniping oblivious SHIELD agents’ soda cans and sandwiches and clipboards.

“I will pay you a million dollars to dart Fury in the ass,” she whispers back. He raises his eyebrows.

“Do you _have_ a million dollars?”

“Stark will pay you a million dollars to dart Fury in the ass,” she says smoothly. Because this is so patently true he has no argument at all, she can see him wondering if it’s worth the risk.

As they’re heading towards the exit gate of the forested village, the ancient blowgun maker trots after them, calling out in his creaky voice. They turn to see what he wants. He walks up to Clint and hands him a length of bamboo. It is polished and there are designs that looks like small animals carefully etched along its length, stained various earthy colors. He holds it out to Clint, a handful of the darts in his other hand.

“For you,” says the man with a smile. Clint looks completely taken aback.

“I can’t take this,” he protests. “This is a work of art!”

“Yes,” says the blowgun maker. “One of my best.”

Clint tries to protest again and the little old man glares at him sternly.

“To refuse a gift is to offer insult. This is a gift. One artist to another. Take it.” There is, of course, no arguing with this. Clint accepts the proffered blowgun and bows his head to the old man, who beams at him.

“Thank you,” says Clint sincerely. “I wish I had something to give you.”

The old man eyes Clint’s gargoyle sunglasses with bright eyes. Never one to be slow on the uptake, Clint pulls the strap over his head and hands them to the man with another bow, which is returned as the gift is accepted. The Indian puts them on, and Natasha sees Jane biting viciously on her own lip to keep from laughing. The wrinkled little old guy looks pretty funny in them all right. He’s inordinately pleased though, and cackles to himself. He walks off chortling, “I’ll be back,” in what is clearly a very bad imitation of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Guys,” says Natasha as they walk to the Hummer. “I think we may have to do some more shopping before we show up at the Pow Wow. Damn it.”

They take stock of what they have to offer, because if the last exchange is any indication, she thinks it’s probably going to be stupid to show up without anything to use as gifts. She thinks she remembers hearing something about Indian culture wherein the exchange of gifts is a serious thing and that if you don’t give something in return, you owe the person who gave you something a big favor and can’t refuse if they ask. Or you’re supposed to give them anything they admire. Or something. Thor has about a dozen silver and copper Asgardian coins, which is a pretty good windfall, as they’re unique, and really very pretty. Between herself and Clint they have seventeen knives, not counting the couple of blades each of them aren’t willing to part with. Jane’s purse is roughly the size of a duffel bag. This propensity shared by so many women to weight themselves down with luggage is incomprehensible to her. She eyes the purse suspiciously, because she could either pack enough stuff in it to live off for a month, or enough ordnance to take out a city block. Jane, however, is able to contribute four hair combs, half a dozen pretty colored barrettes, two enameled pill boxes, a manicure set, several pretty colored stones from the New Mexico desert, a packet of cactus seeds, a pocket sized leather journal containing conversion charts and the periodic table of the elements which Jane has never written in, an unused disposable camera, a pair of bright yellow shoelaces covered with smiley faces, two pocket star charts, three expensive astronaut pens that will write both in zero gravity and upside down, and a dried rattlesnake rattle.

“Are you sure you’re not an assassin?” she asks Jane shrewdly. Jane looks mystified.

“Why? Why would you ask me that looking at this pile of…random stuff?”

She looks at the pile of random stuff and decides it’s probably better not to tell Jane she can probably think of over two dozen ways to use various bits of it to kill her.

Deciding small tokens that truly come from them rather than a gift shop, they get back in the truck and head for the Pow Wow just as the sun starts to set. As she drives, she’s aware that Clint is playing with his new toy beside her. Not as in, shooting at stuff outside the windows as they drive by, but as in…playing with it. There are a lot of stop signs and traffic lights in Cherokee. And a lot of tourists. At each pause, each stop, she cuts her eyes over at him. His fingers trace the carvings on the polished bamboo shaft. She knows his fingertips are so sensitive that he can feel every shallow ridge, every etched whisker and bird’s feather. His eyes drift closed as he enjoys the feel of the wood. He’s reading the pictures with his fingers, seeing their patterns behind his eyelids. His dark lashes flicker in the sensual pleasure he feels in handling the weapon. He isn’t aroused by it, he’s just pleased with it, but she’s not feeling much difference herself right now. He plucks up one of the long slender darts deftly, and twirls it between his agile fingers, weaving it between them lazily, then pausing to softly stroke the fuzz at the end.  She slows down as she approaches a green light, willing it to turn yellow and give her a reason to stop. It does. She brakes and watches him sideways as be brings the dart to his lips. He twirls it there, the wisps of cattail fuzz brushing his parted lips while she surreptitiously bites her own.

“Tasha,” he murmurs softly, his voice barely audible over the rumble of the truck’s engine. He doesn’t open his eyes.

“Hm?” she asks him, a little dazed.

“The light’s green.”

 

Thor

The only indication that the feast site isn’t just a lovely meadow surrounded by woods is the fact that several dozen vehicles are parked in it. They join these assorted vehicles (he never ceases to be amazed by the sheer variety Midgardians seem to require in their personal modes of transportation) and exit the big black Hummer, following a cluster of people who are headed towards the edge of the forest. He can smell wood smoke and roasting meat. It reminds him strongly of home, and he closes his eyes for a few moments to savor it. He isn’t homesick, precisely, because he loves this world and its people, and Jane, but he does miss feeling like he belongs, and not that he is constantly on the cusp of another social gaffe or misunderstanding. The differences are at times enough to make him feel stupid. Loki, he knows, would say that this is only because he IS stupid. Mostly he does not listen to Loki anymore.

A short trail leads them to a clearing surrounded by open-sided shelters of wood which contain benches and tables. At the center of the clearing there is an open circle filled with what looks like river sand, demarcated by logs. He notices that no one walks through this circle, even when needing to travel to its direct opposite side. It must be some sort of taboo to enter the circle before the appointed time.

They are greeted almost at once by Little Sparrow, who has been watching for their arrival. She leads them around to several groupings of people and introduces them. Everyone is welcoming and seems pleased to see them. He has not felt so at ease in a group of people he doesn’t know since he left Asgard. Before he knows it, they have simply been absorbed into the celebration as though they belong here. He finds himself suddenly surprised to realize that Jane is under one of the shelters talking to a woman about some sort of spices she is using to season something she’s cooking while at the same time also discussing the different names for stars and planets used by the Tsalagi. This is the name they call themselves, the way it is actually pronounced in their language, which he can hear being spoken by some of them. Natasha has somehow been included in a wrestling contest with several youths and is currently _probably_ not strangling the young man she has face down in the dirt. Probably. Clint stands beside him while they discuss tribal history and traditions with a group of men. At one point Clint leans close and whispers in his ear.

“These people are really great, but I am _never_ going to remember their names!”

With nods of his head Thor points them out one by one.

“Joe and Billy Whitefoot, Ernest Leatherwood and his wife Nell, Deb Mintz and her children Squirrel and Bunny…I believe these are baby names in their culture and not their true names…Tunie and Hiram Sweetgrass, Charles and David Huskins, Verbin and Sarah Turner and their children Sam, Ellen, Mary, Joseph and Daniel, Tom Farmer, Ray and Marley Price, Don Riverstone, Phil and Denny Walker, Frank and Sophie Turner and Jim and Dana Callerbank. I think that is everyone.”

Clint stares at him for several long moments and he begins to grow uncomfortable. He cannot imagine that he has done yet another incorrect thing, but perhaps he has.

“How did you do that?” Clint finally blurts out.

“Do what?” he asks uneasily, hunching his shoulders.

“Remember everybody! That’s amazing!”

Relieved because his friend is smiling in admiration, Thor relaxes.

“Tis nothing special. When you are heir to the throne, it is important that you remember the names of everyone you meet. Your subjects need to think they matter to you. I was schooled in exercising my memory for faces and names from a very young age,” he explains with a smile.

“Does Fury know you can do that?”

He frowns a little, thinking about it.

“I know not. I rather think he does not know. I always know the names of the agents of SHIELD when I have been once introduced to them, but I do not think he has remarked upon it. Why?”

“Don’t tell him, dude, or he’ll try to turn you into a spy.”

Thor thinks the mental image of himself in a sleek black bodysuit infiltrating some foreign international criminal’s soiree is rather funny.

The food, he decides some time later as he smiles and nods at the admiring gazes of several Tsalagi women, his mouth full of something someone says is hominy with bacon, is excellent. While the people here eat foods just like anyone else, and he remembers passing a Burger King on the way through town, apparently Pow Wows are for traditional dishes. There are platters of venison, wild pork, fowl, and even squirrel stew. He eats sweet potatoes roasted in the ashes of a fire and swimming in butter and maple sugar. There is corn bread and fry bread and johnny cakes. There are beans and squash and corn prepared so many different ways he loses track. There is more than enough to go around, and he eats to his heart’s content, which their hosts begin to find hilarious after everyone else has stuffed themselves almost sick and he is still eating. As he becomes aware of their scrutiny and amusement, he flushes in embarrassment and sets down his plate. Little Sparrow touches his arm and whispers that his appetite is taken as a great compliment and that they are not laughing AT him, they are laughing in amazement. He looks into her black eyes and sees no pretense there, so he decides to take her at her word and eats to repletion, while his friends make wild claims about his capacity and bet against their hosts, and the Indians accept their wagers and then pay up good-naturedly. One of the older women tells him that her daughter is an excellent cook. He swallows his mouthful and grins at her.

“I thank you for your consideration, mother, but my lady would perhaps take it amiss were I to take a wife.” Jane hits him in the arm and he falls backwards off his log bench (being careful not to spill his plate of food) to the great merriment of his audience. Jane is thereupon declared a great warrior and a funny floppy cloth hat adorned with feathers and beads is put on her head.

As full darkness falls, a bonfire it lit in the middle of the circle of sand and the storytelling begins. The legends of the tribe are told in English and Tsalagi. They remind him strongly of Asgardian legends, and when he makes this observation to one of the young men who asks how he likes their tales, he is given no choice but to share one. He makes it one of glory and battle and ferocious beasts, and it is met with loud approval. To general applause, he retakes his seat next to Jane, and more cups of the slightly sweet corn liquor they have been drinking for the last hour or so are pressed into their hands. Jane’s cheeks are flushed and her eyes sparkle with pleasure. Dancers take the place of the storytellers. He is transported by the music. Sometimes it is only drums, and the beat fires his blood. Sometimes the drums are accompanied by bells and rattles. These dances are lively, and he and Jane find themselves pulled into the circle to learn the steps, laughing breathlessly when they stumble. Sometimes the music is the wonderful flute he heard played in Little Sparrow’s gallery and he feels his throat and chest tighten with emotion. Contrary to the foolish machismo of so many of the Midgardian men he has met, he feels no shame in showing his feelings, and tears roll unabashed down his cheeks and the music weeps under the starry sky. With his arms around Jane and surrounded by people he knows he could call brothers, he is happier than he has been in a very long time.

 

Clint

The Pow Wow is a ball. The food and company are great. Watching Natasha kick the asses of every bragging kid who thinks he can take her down is hilarious. He makes fifty bucks betting on Thor’s eating prowess, so it’s profitable too. The music makes him feel strange, almost restless, and he realizes he isn’t sure where Natasha has gone. He scans the clearing and nearly misses her. It is only the reflection of the fire in her eyes that gives her position away. If she were really trying to hide, she wouldn’t be looking into the flames, so he slips to the edge of the woods to join her where she leans against a tree without apprehension.

“All right?” he asks anyway, just to be sure.

“Fine,” she says. “Just felt like watching from back here.”

He brushes a hand over her hair.

“If you need to leave, it’s no problem.” Natasha’s cover often requires her to fit into large crowds of people, but given her choice, she prefers privacy. They have been pretty exposed to a lot of humanity the last 24 hours, even if all of it has been a blast.

“No. I really am having fun. It’s so pretty.” She looks up through the leaves to where a few stars wink through the leaves. He thinks the faint flush staining her cheeks isn’t heat or alcohol. “The music…I like it. It made me want to be out here…”

Taking a deep breath that fills his lungs with the scents of smoke and leaves and wood mold and growing things, he gets it. Behind them, an owl hoots, unperturbed by the music.

“It’s kind of nice from back here, isn’t it? With the trees all around?” he says easily, snaking his arms around her waist and snugging her back up against his front. They watch from the protective shadows for a little while.

“I could see you as one of them,” she says softly after a few minutes.

“You think?” he laughs a little.

“Mm. That old guy who gave you the blowgun thought so too. You’re a hunter. He recognized it. That gift he gave you, it meant something to you too. I saw you with it in the truck.” She has turned a little in his arms to look at him with a faint smile.

“Uh huh,” he muses thoughtfully, feels himself start to harden. “I saw you seeing me.”

She turns the rest of the way and kisses him. Her mouth tastes like corn liquor and fry bread. Her tongue parts his lips to sweep into his mouth and she moans softly. His hands tighten convulsively on her waist at her sudden ferocity. By unspoken agreement they ease back further into the woods, tongues tangling while they pant hungrily into each other’s mouths.

“Not that I’m complaining,” he gasps as she shoves him up against a tree trunk and yanks up his shirt to bite him on the nipple. “But what brou… _mmn_ …brought this on?”

“Tonight’s my turn,” she mutters, fingers busy on his fly. “You remind me of some ancient warrior. Stupid blowgun. You’re a showoff. I’m…. _dammit_ ,” she wrestles with his zipper and he laughs, until she wins the struggle and goes fluidly to her knees, enveloping him in her warm wet mouth. Then he leans his head back against the tree truck sucking his breath in sharply and thanks whatever gods are listening. She backs off, breathing hard. “I’m having you here. Now.” She goes back to work, sucking and nibbling and sometimes even sinking her teeth into him a little until he whines in the back of his throat and his legs start to shake. Then she takes him to the ground and stands looking down at him. Her eyes are dark and fathomless as she shimmies out of her jeans and kneels over him. His hands reach out to grasp her hips and he pulls her towards him even as she lowers herself down onto him. They both gasp when their bodies meet. The night air is cool on their skins, and she shines like a pale moonbeam in the shadows of the forest. The distant drums are the rhythm they move to. His calloused but sensitive fingers drift over her body, dipping between them to stroke over her clit, trickling up her sides to pluck at her nipples. Her fingernails scrape roughly over his skin, pressing into the hard muscles of his chest and his arms. He lifts himself up to kiss her and she sucks his tongue into her mouth and bites it, swallowing his groan of pain and need.

“Mine,” she whispers against his lips. “Mine,” she repeats as she rides him harder and his breath hitches in his chest. “Mine,” she breathes as her pleasure swamps her and the ripples of her muscles on his cock pull him along with her, and,

“Yours,” he whispers back as he pulls her down next to him and they lie sated on the leaves and moss, staring up into the stars, while the drums beat and the fires in the clearing warm the night.


	5. Part 5

It’s their last day. Jane allows herself a few moments to feel sad about this fact as she walks out onto the balcony with a heavy mug of coffee in her hand, liberally dosed with sugar and cream. She’s going to be sorry to leave. It has been the most fantastic vacation of her whole life. At the same time she regrets its end, she is sort of ready to get back to the lab. There’s a lot of work to do, and she’s both a little tired and a little sore. Not, you know, in a bad way, she thinks with a small private smile as she looks down to the edge of the woods below, where Thor and the Black Widow are sparring. She can’t imagine what on earth would make someone think punching the crap out of another person is a nice way to wake up, but over breakfast the two of them had bemoaned the lack of a gym, eyed one another speculatively, and cheerfully agreed a spar would be an awesome start to their day. Clint seems to think it’s funny. When Natasha had asked him why, he’d smiled smugly and said he was looking forward both to NOT having his face ground into the floor AND watching her meet her match. Watching them, Jane realizes he’s kind of right. Thor isn’t always fast enough to block Natasha’s blows, but he doesn’t even flinch when she lands them, and his grin is ferocious.

She feels movement at her side and turns to see that Clint has slid silently up beside her, holding his own coffee, to watch the match with great amusement. His eyes are a little soft and dreamy too. She’s been aware for some time how good he and Natasha are together, but she isn’t sure she’d realized until this moment how deeply the archer cares for his partner. This touches her, and she shoulder-bumps him affectionately. He smiles at her, a quick little flash of a smile, then goes back to watching.

“They’re something, aren’t they,” he muses softly, after sipping his coffee.

“They’re beautiful,” she agrees. They are. She takes in the sight of them, both of their bodies flawless, their movements precise and without embellishment, their hair of wheat gold and embers shining in the morning light, the sheen of sweat on their skin glistening. Thor’s muscular frame moves with a grace that no longer surprises her. She has seen him in action too many times now. All kinds of action. The thought makes her blush a little. Clint notices, and turns a bit, leaning a hip on the balcony rail to gaze at her keenly. He’s got great vision, that one.

“Still wierded out?” he asks gently, which deepens the blush.

“No,” she says defensively. He raises one eyebrow. “Maybe a little. Yeah.”

“Why?”

Good grief, can the man not just drink his coffee and ogle his lover in slience?

“I’m really not much of an exhibitionist, despite evidence to the contrary,” she says as primly as she can. He laughs a little, but there’s no mocking in it, and certainly no malice, so she manages not to take offense.

“I’m not talking about the hot tub, Jane,” he says on the tail end of the laughter. “I mean the whole package.”

“Most of the time I manage not to think about the fact that I’m dating a demigod,” she replies, though when he runs up the side of a tree, flips over backwards to land behind a hotly pursuing Natasha, and body-slams the assassin to the ground so fast Jane can’t see how he does it, she has a hard time not thinking about it. Human beings can’t do things like that. Well, she concedes, glancing at Clint, not ordinary ones anyway.

“Still not my point,” he goes on, barely flinching when his lover hits the ground like she’s going to get plowed under it.

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Clint,” says Jane. “Just spit it out. Since when is beating around the bush your style?”

“Beating’s kind of my style though,” he says with a smartassed leer. “And okay, you’re right. What I mean is are you feeling better about the whole kink factor, or is it still making you twitchy like it was when you stormed into my rooms trying to hide BDSM toy wrappers in your pockets?” When she blushes furiously and covers her face with the hand not holding a hot cup of coffee, he laughs some more. Who the hell made him so damn chatty this morning anyway? And what business is it of his? Still…

She peers at him through her fingers and considers. She hasn’t really talked to anyone about this, not in any depth. Natasha’s her friend, as astonishing as that is, but analyzing feelings makes Natasha want to sign up for elective dental surgery to get out of it.

“How does anybody ever feel comfortable about stuff like that?” she asks softly, not liking the plaintive tone in her voice but not being able to help it. “When Thor and I are alone, he makes it impossible for me to think about anything but how amazing he makes me feel. He…he doesn’t give me a choice, you know?”

“Thor’s a force of nature,” agrees Clint easily. “And since according to you, Asgardians are apparently total freaks, and I still want to visit there by the way, I doubt he’s ever really stopped to think that it might not come so easily for you.”

“How come it’s so easy for _you_?” Jane asks suddenly, looking intently at him. He goes still for a few moments, his silver-blue eyes thoughtful.

“What do you know about my background?” he asks her, in a seemingly irrelevant change of subject.

“Practically nothing,” says Jane, bewildered.

“My brother and I were orphaned when we were little kids,” he says, and shakes his head a little impatiently when she lays a sympathetic hand on his arm. “We lived in a kids’ home for a while, but it was….well. We ran away, and joined the circus.” At Jane’s surprised laugh, he grins crookedly at her. “Pretty cliché, huh? But we really did. We were roustabouts for a while, doing odd jobs and helping wherever we were needed, but it wasn’t long before a couple of the performers noticed I had a knack for hitting stuff I aimed at. Mostly tossing garbage into trash cans at that point, but I could knock soda cans out of people’s hands with a pebble and stuff too, general troublesome kid shit. I learned about throwing knives, and how to shoot a bow, from them. Turned out one of them was using his skillset to line his own pockets, and he tried to recruit me. My brother went for it. I didn’t. We… well, we don’t talk anymore. ANYway, that isn’t the point. The point is, the circus life isn’t exactly a sheltered one. There’s a good reason the term ‘freak’ has been adopted by a lot of people as slang for kinky or alternative, believe me. Everything was okay in the circus, as long as it was consensual. Probably even some stuff that shouldn’t have been okay, and nobody really paid a lot of attention to which side of legal your age fell on. While I was learning the….ha…ropes, I was Marksman’s assistant in his act. I got tied to a wheel and had knives thrown at me, and lit matches flicked out of my mouth with a whip before I was old enough to understand the weird feeling it gave me in my gut.  I was having my hands tied behind my back and being blindfolded so I could be target practice in front of an audience during the time I did start to understand what it meant. I lost my virginity to one of our acrobats, who had been raped as a young girl and was afraid to let anybody touch her, so I let her tie me to her bed so she’d feel safe. After that, I let her tie me to her bed because I liked it. She was a biter. I liked that too. Later, after she trusted me, she wanted me to help her get over being afraid, so I tied her to the bed and spent a lot of nights showing her that I wasn’t going to hurt her…unless she asked me to. She did, eventually. I liked that too.”

Wow, mouths Jane silently, finding his story a little bit sad but mostly fascinating. His mouth quirks up at the corner, and she notices that the lines there, deeply grooved in pain and sorrow when she had met him, are only as deep as his smile now. She finds him lovely, as much for himself now as for what he’s done for Natasha.

“See, I never knew any of those things were strange, or that people were taught not to talk about them or admit they might want them. Repression wasn’t a word in a carny’s vocabulary. When my sexuality was growing, I only heard words like yes, and more, and harder. I never heard anyone say don’t, or wrong. Getting what you wanted wasn’t weird or sick, it was just okay.”

“That’s….actually kind of beautiful,” says Jane wonderingly. “Do you ever think you might have turned out to be….Natasha calls it vanilla, right?.....if you’d grown up in a regular house with a regular mom and dad?”

“Probably would have,” he says with a shrug. “And how sad. Jane, it isn’t our bodies that tell us the things we want are wrong, it’s society. If you’re embarrassed by the stuff you and Thor are into, it’s not your heart talking, it’s your head, and your upbringing. Why isn’t it okay to want what you want?”

“There are so many men in the scientific community,” she muses, still watching Thor and Natasha brutalizing each other gleefully. “It’s really a gentlemen’s club sort of mentality, and it’s not easy for a woman to be taken seriously by them. I had to work really hard to be treated as a colleague instead of as a chambermaid.”

“Okay yeah, I get that,” he says, waiting for the point.

“It…goes against my nature to let Thor act like a Neanderthal and treat me like property,” she says uncomfortably. Clint glares at her a little and uncurls a finger from the handle of his mug to point it at her.

“Bullshit,” he says firmly.

“It’s not,” she says hotly.

“Is too. If it was really against your nature, it wouldn’t turn you on.”

It’s kind of hard to argue with that one.

“And anyway,” he continues forcefully, “Thor doesn’t treat you like property. That’s what you do with your car, or your television. He knows the difference on an innate level, even if you don’t. The man puts you on a pedestal, Jane. He adores you. He admires the hell out of you. You should hear him talk about you when you’re not around. Tony’s started plugging his earns and pretending to throw up when he starts in on how brilliant and clever you are.” Jane laughs, despite her squirming discomfort over this topic, because she can see Tony doing just that. “He….ah…takes them out again when Thor talks about the sounds you make when he….how’s he put it….brings you to your completion. Or asks if anybody else has discovered how wonderfully versatile Midgardian inventions are, such as wooden spoons and yardsticks and hairbrushes….Tony turns kind of an interesting color when Thor mentions hairbrushes.”

Jane starts to be mortified and furious, but Clint won’t let her. He stops her, free hand on her arm when she would turn and flee.

“Jane, Thor doesn’t really know how to be anything but honest. He’s not sharing private stuff to be disrespectful of you, he’s just so happy he thinks everybody should share in it.”

She sighs, but he’s right.

“You need to figure out what it is you’re really afraid of, Jane. D/s and other initials like it that are all varying shades and depths of the things we do, is not about shame. A good dom knows perfectly well he…or she…wouldn’t be anywhere without their sub. Power exchange is just that…it’s an exchange, it isn’t about force or taking something you don’t deserve. It’s about trust, and honesty, and making each other happy. And really fucking hot sex, too. Unless the relationship is fucked up, and I realize some are, it’s the sub who really has the power, because they are the ones who have the ultimate say. Do you really think Thor would ever do something you didn’t want him to do, or ignore you if you told him to stop?”

“No,” says Jane, immediately and definitely. “Never.”

“Does he do stuff to you that you don’t like?”

She starts to say yes, sometimes, but she makes herself stop and think about it first. Some of the things Thor does to her hurt. Sometimes quite a bit even. Some of them scare her a little, but if she’s being honest with herself, only a little, and only at first. Once she’s in the middle of them, she’s usually coming too hard to be scared anymore.

“No,” she admits at last.

“So what is it you’re really afraid of?” he asks keenly, and she looks away, unable to meet his steady silvered gaze.

“Why are you asking me all this?” she asks abruptly, avoiding the question if she’s honest about it. “What difference does it make to you?”

He’s silent for a long time, and when she can look at him again, she realizes she’s hurt his feelings.

“Clint, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean….”

“It’s okay,” he sighs. “For a lot of years, people thought I was a fuckup. I was in trouble with the law on and off as a kid, petty stuff only, but enough to get tagged a delinquent. I have problems with authority, and when I joined SHIELD, I went through handlers like a hot knife through butter for a long time, until Phil. He saw something other people didn’t, and he trusted me. It’s because he trusted me that Tasha came to join SHIELD. Did you know I’d been sent to kill her?”

This is so startling Jane spills a little coffee on her hand and hisses when it burns a little.

“What??”

“Yeah. She was an enemy agent at the time. I…I almost did it, almost let that arrow fly. God, even now it gives me nightmares sometimes. But there was something about her, even then, even when I didn’t know her as anything but a mark. I couldn’t do it. I brought her in. Another handler would have booted me out of SHIELD and had her quietly erased by somebody more obedient than me. Phil didn’t. He trusted my instincts, and we learned what kind of person she really is, and how badly she wanted out of the life she was living at the time. I realize this doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with what we’re talking about, but give me a minute,” he says earnestly, so she does, of course.

“Phil and Tasha were the first people who didn’t treat me like a fuckup, as an adult. I gotta admit I did bring a lot of it on myself. I never do know when it’s smarter to keep my mouth shut. I only follow orders I agree with. Anyway, the point is that Thor’s never treated me like a fuckup either, and neither have you. That ranks you pretty high on the short list of people I’d take a bullet for. So if I’d risk my life for you guys, Jane…why the hell wouldn’t I do what I can to try to make sure you’re happy?”

“You do realize you’re ruining your reputation right now, Agent Barton?” she says teasingly.

“No witnesses but you, and if Stark hears about it, I’ll lie my ass off. Plus get even with you for blabbing,” he says glibly.

“Okay, fair enough. I withdraw my objections,” she laughs, then grows serious. “You wanted to know what I’m afraid of. Well hell Clint, I guess it’s several things really.”

“Okay.”

“One, I’m afraid he’s going to leave me again.”

“Is there anything you can do about it, if his father calls him home?”

“No.”

“You do realize that’s the only reason he’d ever go, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” she sighs.

“C’mon Jane, you’re a scientist. What do you do with a possibility you can’t effect no matter what you do?”

“You set it aside,” she says, suddenly able to do so for the first time since he came back into her life.

“Okay. Next?”

“I’m afraid people will think I’m weak, and laugh at me, if they find out.”

“You mean people besides the entire Avengers Initiative who you voluntarily let in on your lifestyle choice over an open intercom?”

This is so patently absurd that all she can do is laugh and realize she’s being stupid on that one. _Captain America_ listened to her screaming her lungs out while Thor beat her within an inch of her life. Stuffy Nobel scientists  are nothing compared to that.

“I….I guess I’m afraid of losing myself,” she finally admits reluctantly. He considers this one for a little while.

“Ooookay,” he says slowly. “Some people do. Lose themselves in it, I mean. There are people who seek out the lifestyle because they feel unwanted by anybody in the mainstream, and there are always going to be losers calling themselves Doms who are going to prey on the lost that way, and end up fucking them up a lot worse than they were before they walked through the door of that first dungeon with their damaged hearts on their fuckin’ sleeves. I’ve seen that, and heard about it, too many times. People who aren’t secure enough in who they are, and who are looking to the lifestyle to fix their problems, or hide from them, often end up losing themselves. In a bad way. You don’t have to worry about that one. You know who you are. You like your life, and your job. You didn’t need Thor to fix anything about you.”

“Thanks Clint,” smiles Jane, and feels a lot better already.

“Then there’s the other way, and all I can say about that one, is so the fuck what? So you lose yourself a little, get caught up in the thrill of what you guys are doing for each other. So you choose to forget the outside world sometimes, and just be consumed by each other. So you let go of your hangups enough to get a little lost in the sensation, the fun, the naughty? So what? You find each other, every time.”

Jane looks at Clint without speaking for some time, until he fidgets a little and looks defensive.

“What?” he asks defensively.

“For a fuckup,” she says finally, “you’re an incredibly wise man, Clint Barton.”

 

It is some days later, after they are home, and life is back to normal, that Jane startles Thor speechless when he returns to their room from a short mission in Virginia rounding up some AIM agents who are using a very faulty shrink ray on local wildlife with unsettling results.  She’s fixing dinner, and he strides up behind her, his strong arms going around her body, nuzzling softly at the back of her neck. She turns in his arms, kissing him warmly while her hand gropes behind her back for the bowl of ice in which she has shrimp chilling. When she tips a handful of it down the back of his shirt, he yelps in surprise and spends several entertaining seconds twisting around like a contortionist having a seizure as he tries to rid himself of it. Once he has accomplished this, his blue eyes narrow at her dangerously.

“Have a care, Jane,” he purrs, his body crowding her back against the counter. “Such pranks may earn you more than you are bargaining for.” He chuckles though, as he leans down to kiss her. She smiles against his clever lips and nips his tongue sharply when it dips lazily into her mouth to stroke and taste. He pulls his head back in surprise and stares at her for a moment, as though trying to decide if she has lost her mind.

“What has gotten into you?” he demands incredulously, clearly at a loss as to how to handle this new mischievous Jane he has never seen before. Before he can ask her if she’s feeling all right, she pouts at him. She knows she manages it well, because she’s been practicing in the mirror all day.

“I was _bored_ ,” she whines. She’s been practicing this too. While he’s peering at her suspiciously, trying to figure out what on earth’s going on, she makes a face at him. And sticks out her tongue. He straightens up slowly, a delighted grin splitting his face in a flash of white teeth, and a low rumble in his chest thrills her to her toes. His hands go around her waist and slide under her blouse, the heat of his touch on her bare skin making her catch her breath a little.

“Tisn’t polite to stick out your tongue, Jane,” he warns, his voice like dark wet silk.

So she sticks it out again. She shrieks with delight when he throws her over his shoulder and carries her into the bedroom, giggling wildly at his attempts to be stern with her when he’s grinning like a madman. She shrieks again, laughing and struggling ineffectually when he tears her pants off and hauls her over his lap. Even when the shrieks turn pained, she’s still laughing, laughing with tears of pain in her eyes while he punishes her with relish, wondering why it took her so long. He’s thrilled by her, as is evident in how short the spanking is (albeit thorough) and how soon he’s buried to the hilt in her from behind, his teeth set in the muscle of her shoulder, shouting when he comes, and taking her with him, laughing and crying and having so much fun she hopes Clint lives to be as old as he wants and that all the dreams he’s ever had come true, because the archer is right. They’ll find each other, every time.


End file.
